


Someone Else's Problems

by asocialconstruct



Series: Basic [6]
Category: Starfighter (Comic)
Genre: Homophobic Language, M/M, Sexual Harassment, Victim Blaming
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-19
Updated: 2013-03-10
Packaged: 2017-11-26 01:06:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 20
Words: 41,020
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/644846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asocialconstruct/pseuds/asocialconstruct
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Encke POV of Keeler and Encke's early relationship.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Encke = James = Hannibal

The months blurred together after he was stationed out, a lot of hurry up and wait, weeks of nauseating boredom punctuated with moments of intense terror, for himself and his navigator, even though he could hardly keep them separate, one injured, the next dead, another discharged on a psych eval, all of them blurring together like the days.  He was Xerxes for a few months, then Elijah then Atlas, with a Leonidas and a Malachi and an Eos.  He was Othello for about a week until he filed a complaint, then it was changed to Prospero, which was better at least than his navigator’s, who got changed to Caliban.  

Caliban didn’t last long, depressive and anxious to begin with, he got shipped out when he tried to kill himself.  James got three rounds of counseling, a call to Morgan, and another navigator named Caliban, just as nameless, blonde and replaceable as the first one.

He fucked his navigators, of course, fucked all of them to keep the other fighters away, and tried to think of it as doing the navigators a favor so they could guiltily hook up with other shy blondes.  Mostly he dated Rosie Palm once in a while and tried not to think about it the rest of the time, too exhausted to think about fucking anyone except to keep his navigators safe from the rest of the assholes aboard.

Then for a while he was Hannibal with a Scipio, and if someone thought that was a good joke, at least it wasn’t quite as racist as Othello, so he didn’t make another complaint.  Scipio wasn’t the best of his navigators, but he wasn’t the worst, and James had learned to make up for it, had learned how to watch Scipio’s back out in the ship and on station.  

Scipio lasted the longest, managed to keep them both alive and uninjured the longest, and by the end of it he’d forgotten he was James anymore, just Hannibal, and he stopped sending Morgan photos when he was on leave, stopped taking them, stopped looking at the old photos he had in the bottom of his duffel.  Easier to only think about what was in front of him then, concentrate on his work and forget he had anything to go back to so he couldn’t be so afraid of not going back to it.  

He was good at what he did, and that was all.  He was better at being Hannibal than he had been at being James, so that was who he became, where it was easier to follow orders and rules and forget that he had any obligations besides watching his navigators’ backs and killing things.  He was good at that, and didn’t try to pretend that he meant anything more to his navigators than they meant to him.

Hannibal didn’t have to worry about whether Aunt Morgan would be ashamed of him, or how Fifty ( _Sacha_ , the part of him that was still James said) was doing, or whether he was fucking up any of his navigators as badly as he’d fucked up Fifty.  So Hannibal didn’t worry about any of that; those were James’ problems.

* * *

He thought he was good at what he did, until the lieutenant called him into his office and let him twist there, wondering what the fuck an officer could have to say to him that couldn’t have just been said in briefings or a reprimand in his file.

Hannibal stood uncomfortably at attention, uneasy without Scipio beside him.  Scipio would have known how to deal with this, would have known how to deal with the lead navigator frowning down at a tablet, tapping out notes and ignoring him.  Navigators knew how to deal with delicate things, how to understand delicate nuances of social niceties, and Hannibal was lost without Scipio there to do it for him, in front of this skinny, pretty little navigator who held his whole life in his hands.  He’d only ever had to deal with one navigator at a time, his own, in the privacy of their room or their ship, where he didn’t have to worry about making notes in his file, judging everything he said, the way he stood there, the answers he gave.  Navigators were complicated. 

“Do you get along with your navigator well, Hannibal?” Keeler asked without looking up, still busy with something.  

“Yes sir,” Hannibal said, trying not to wonder if Scipio had asked for a transfer.  They weren’t as high in the rankings as he’d been with his last navigator, but they worked together fine.  Scipio would have said something if there was a problem, wouldn’t have just reported him to the lieutenant.

“Does he follow your orders well?”

“Yes sir, we’re a good team, sir,” Hannibal said.  Scipio wasn’t brilliant like Eos had been, but Eos was dead and Scipio wasn’t, so Hannibal tried not to think about it too much.  Morgan would have liked Eos, but Hannibal tried not to think about that too much either.

“Hmm,” Keeler frowned, jotting something down on the tablet.  “He’s not a very good tactician, is he?  But you’ve managed to keep him from getting you both killed so far.”

Hannibal tried not to frown, focusing just over Keeler’s shoulder.  Couldn’t contradict the lieutenant, but that didn’t mean he had to throw Scipio to the wolves either.  If he hadn’t been called in to take a reprimanding for himself, he wasn’t going to give the skinny little coward of a lieutenant ammunition to write up Scipio.  “We’re a team, sir, we both do what we can.”

“Well, if your navigator isn’t going to live up to his namesake with his tactics, he’s going to live up to it by getting you killed,” Keeler said, finally looking up.  White hair fell in his face, making him look thinner, more tired, his eyes too big.  “I’ve had you reassigned, probationary for now until I decide if the assignment’s permanent.  Have your things moved to my quarters by lights out tonight.  We’re on patrol tomorrow morning and we’ll see if you can keep up with me.  Congratulations on the promotion, Encke.  Dismissed.”

Hannibal made it out the door somehow, but stood there poleaxed and dumb outside it, navigators glancing at him as they passed.  Lead fighter.  Encke—the old Encke, whatever that poor bastard was going to be called now—wouldn’t like it, but that wasn’t Hannibal’s problem.  

* * *

Hannibal lay back on his new bunk, smoking, waiting.  Officers’ quarters weren’t much better than crew quarters, but at least Keeler had already claimed the top bunk, no climbing up to sleep next to the ceiling.  He could take getting thrown around out in the emptiness, but not the vertigo of laying that high up every night.  He’d given Scipio the briefest of hugs for how long it had been.  Scipio would get another Hannibal, and after a few weeks they would barely recognize each other in the corridors, just one more navigator and one more fighter passing without anything in common.  

Then he sat there in the empty room that his key opened, expecting something besides the barest of rooms with nothing personal about it, but not sure what.  It didn’t even smell like anyone lived in it, no hint that anyone would even be coming back to it that night besides the neat white uniforms in one of the drawers, a half-gone bottle of whiskey nestled behind them.  

Keeler came back well after crew lights out and barely gave him a glance.  “Put it out.  You don’t smoke any more,” Keeler said, slinging off his jacket.

“You don’t fucking tell me what to do, navigator,” Hannibal—Encke—said, taking another drag on it.  Not how it was going to be if they were partners, no more sir yes sir and standing at attention for a little navigator he could just as well snap in half as take orders from.  Most of his navigators had wanted a pissing contest when they were first paired together, but everyone knew how things were supposed to work out.  Just because this was a field promotion didn’t mean that it would end up any different.

“Fine,” Keeler shrugged.  “Would you like me to reassign you now, or in the morning, since you’ve wasted my time anyway?  Because you won’t last long if you can’t keep the rest of the fighters in line, and you won’t keep them in line if you can’t be faster and stronger than all of them, all the time.  You’re not one of them anymore, and they’re not your friends.”

Encke frowned, watching Keeler ignore him as he got ready for bed.  Skinny lean muscle, barely any substance to him in a fight.  Keeler moved around the little room like he wasn’t even there, like Encke was just as temporary and boring and replaceable as the sheets.

He’d heard things about everyone that’d fucked Keeler, but who hadn’t, it was just a dick wagging contest to talk up who’d fucked who and how hard, no different from basic.  But then here was the lead navigator stripping down to boxers and an undershirt as plain as could be, his white braid slinging over one shoulder.  Everyone had fucked the lieutenant, which probably meant no one had, but the rumors had to come from somewhere.  His other navigators had had some fucking modesty, changing in the head at first, trying to keep things professional and not start shit the very first night.

“The fuck would you know about fighters?” Encke said.

Keeler gave him a tired glance and started to climb the rungs to his bunk.  “Enough to have outlasted three lead fighters who couldn’t keep up.  If you want to be number four, be my guest,” Keeler said, and lay down without another word.  

Encke frowned and ground out the cigarette, flicking off the lights.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cassius is the name of Encke's second on [pg 3:20,](http://starfightercomic.com/chapter_03_page.php?page=Chapter_03_Page_20.jpg) named by A2MOM in her fic [Task Name Encke.](http://www.fanfiction.net/s/8605247/1/Task-Name-Encke) Nereid is an OC stolen out of EMathews' [Scared.](http://archiveofourown.org/works/640042/chapters/1160274)

Encke sat on the hanger deck after their first patrol, trying not to puke into his helmet.

It was different seeing it from the outside, where Keeler had made it look so effortless, where he didn’t have to realize how much worse it was to be in the tiny little ship skimming the cruiser’s hull, flipping nose over tail with the only point of reference spinning away crazily and his stomach heaving worse than his first time out in the black because he’d thought he’d known what to expect and this wasn’t it.

Keeler dropped a little plastic vial of pills next to his boot, standing next to him with his face blank.  Dramamine, the motion sickness pills they put in new recruits’ kits.  He glared up at Keeler, but thought better of it and put his head back in his hands.

“Those should help.  Try to keep up next time,” Keeler said, and walked off.  Encke rubbed his face, trying to decide if he’d rather a transfer back where he wouldn’t have to deal with this shit, or to stay and show Keeler how it was going to be.  Once his stomach stopped flipping over.

* * *

He ate lunch alone in his new office, a blank little closet barely big enough to fit a desk and two chairs in, near Keeler’s in central where he could see aides and assistants hurrying in and out.  He shut the door and threw his box lunch down, starved from finally throwing up his breakfast and running laps with his new sergeant Cassius. 

He’d promoted the old Encke—Bede, now, and someone probably thought that was a hilarious fucking joke—to a staff position in the commander’s office and the old sergeant Nereid to supervising training under Cassius, no sense in leaving Bede and Nereid where he couldn’t keep an eye on them, where they could be left to plan something together.  Better to keep them where Cassius could watch his back and help keep an eye on them.

He checked up on as much as his new security allowance would let him, reviewing disciplinary records and squad assignments, flicking through the commander’s orders and all the bullshit he’d have to deal with that afternoon.  He ate his soup and his apple and his granola bar in crabby silence, trying to be grateful for the half hour of quiet but too annoyed with the mess’ idea of decent calories that barely took the edge off.  Whoever the fuck thought reconstituted french onion soup and an apple was a decent meal after being on his feet for twelve hours a day should have been shot.  Probably some fucking navigator who sat in an office all day and didn’t do any goddamn real work.

He was sitting there drumming fingers on his desk, annoyed with the shitty slow crew database and thinking about sending Cassius down to the mess for another—fuck, three or four more—apples, he was so fucking hungry, when the door chimed and he thumbed it open, half expecting one of Keeler’s blond little assistants to come in and tell him to report for another round of humiliation.

Encke, the old Encke, the poor fuck who’d gotten shoved out of his new job, stood there in the doorway, waiting to be let in to his old office.

“At ease.  Have a seat,” Encke said, barely keeping himself from standing at attention for the lieutenant, because he wasn’t a lieutenant anymore and Encke was.

Encke—Bede, he was Bede now—eased himself down to sit, less uncomfortable with this than Encke felt, or at least he looked it.  He closed the door as insurance, didn’t need this to turn into a dick waving performance for all the damn navigators in central, word probably going around that they were in here beating the shit out of each other.

“What do you want, En—Bede?” Encke demanded, cursing himself out for slipping.  Goddamn codenames and being switched around like they were interchangeable, this would have been so much easier if the fucker had the good courtesy to just be dead instead of transferred and making things complicated.

Bede snorted, ranks still slipping back and forth.  “That’s your problem now, that fucking name and Keeler and all his problems, and good fucking luck with all of it, I don’t want it.  Came to see if you’d figured out the crew database and all that shit yet.”

“Got it fine,” Encke said warily, not interested in begging for help and handing Bede a way to undermine him right off the bat.  “What about Keeler?  You ask for the transfer?”

Bede gave him a disgusted look.  “You’re fucking right I did.  Listen, son—ha! Sir, listen, _sir_ —he’s a fucking basket case and he flies like a crazy.  But I heard you already found out about that this morning.”

Encke cursed himself out again, swore he wasn’t going to let himself look like a green idiot on the flight deck again.  “What’s wrong with him?  Psych case?” he said instead.  Another Caliban, another Malachi, Encke didn’t much care for walking in on Keeler limp and going cold in the bathroom with his wrists slashed in the shower, he’d done that enough already, not that command would give a fuck unless Keeler’s flying got erratic, but if he had a pattern Encke could see about pushing for an evaluation and getting a new lead navigator in the mean time.  See who kept up then.

Bede snorted again.  “Probably.  Thinks his dick is bigger than everyone else’s, he’s a fucking control freak,” Bede said.  “All he wants from a fighter is a no-sir yessir, and he’ll make you fucking miserable if you think any different.  Thinks we’re all just a bunch of monkeys who push buttons and suck cock, he needs to get laid.”

Encke gave him a level look, thinking better of getting pulled into this bullshit if Bede was just trying to get him to do the dirty work of getting back at Keeler for something.  Six all over again if he wasn’t careful.  Just because Bede had always been more subtle didn’t mean he wasn’t just as much of an asshole as any other fighter with a grudge. “Did you fuck him?” Encke asked.

“Fuck no, but you and me are probably the only ones who haven’t.  You want my advice, I’d keep my dick to myself if I were you, word is he’s gotten more than a couple former fucks royally fucked, if you know what I mean, and fuck only knows what he’s picked up from his little harem over there,” Bede said, jerking his head at the door and the direction of Keeler’s office with the stream of navigators and assistants going in and out all morning.

Encke glanced from the door back to Bede, and finally dismissed him before he heard anything else he didn’t need to know.  

He hadn’t heard anything about Keeler fucking the navigators, but everyone knew the lead fighter was supposed to take advantage of his position, so why not the navigators too, if their academy training was anything like basic had been.  Keeler didn’t look like much, but Fifty hadn’t looked like much either until Encke had stopped thinking with his dick long enough to think about it.  He pushed that thought away and got back to reviewing intelligence reports, determined not to let Keeler make a fool of him.

* * *

Keeler was there when he finally made it back to the room that night, exhausted and sore and stinking, everyone belowdecks thinking the changeover between lieutenants was a good time to settle old fights and start new ones, and just the sight of Keeler sitting cross legged up on the top bunk, tapping out orders nice and comfortable with a glass of whiskey balanced on his knee, was enough to piss Encke off as soon as he walked in the door.  Keeler didn’t look up as he came in, just went right on tapping out his work as if Encke was just a new piece of furniture.  Encke kicked his boots across the room and left them lying there, just to put a mark on the room.

“Pretty nice contraband,” he said, eyeing the bottle by Keeler’s knee.  If rules were that lax for officers, he’d have to look into getting his own bottle from somewhere, especially if most days were going to be this shitty.

“I”m sure you’d know the difference,” Keeler said, sounding exhausted and bored, frowning at his computer, but Encke didn’t miss the way his long fingers tightened around the cup.

“Enough to know thirty-year single malt is too rich for my blood,” Encke said, not bothering to hide his contempt as he stripped for the shower.  Keeler hadn’t bothered to try making this work, so neither would he.  Fuck Keeler and his prejudices, maybe Encke had never tasted a good scotch but he sure as fuck knew the difference between what he could afford and what he couldn’t, and why Keeler would never deign to pour him any.

He could feel Keeler’s eyes on him as he stripped, the blond little bastard not bothering to look him in the eye when he had something to say but fine with watching the show once he was naked.  He ignored Keeler’s looks, grabbing a change of clothes as he went for the head so he could avoid getting eyed up when he was out of the shower.  Just because he’d been paired up with some smarmy little navigator who thought this whole fucking thing was a game didn’t mean he had to play along.

When he was out, his royal highness Keeler was putting away his whiskey, giving him the briefest of looks before shutting the drawer and turning away.  “You think you’ll manage better tomorrow?” Keeler asked quietly, brushing past him to the bunks, and Encke had just fucking had it.

He shoved Keeler back against the wall, one hand on Keeler’s chest and one on the wall next to his head, just enough to make Keeler wonder what else he might do, just enough to give him a little scare and make him watch his mouth.  If one of them had to get pushed around, it wasn’t going to be Encke.

“Maybe you thought that was a pretty cute joke for the first time out, make me look like a fucking idiot, but you’re done with your little games next time we’re out.  If you pull that shit again—“

Keeler pushed his hand away and crossed his arms over his chest, staring Encke down even though Keeler was half his size.  “Or what?  You’ll fuck me until I learn to follow orders?” Keeler demanded, pissed and not afraid of him for a second, just as cold as Thirty had been.

Encke stared at him, caught off guard with his bluff called.  “That what this is all about?  I heard about you.  What do you do, pick out whoever you want to fuck and then get him pissed off enough to shove you around how you want, but you’re too much of a pussy to ask for?  Or do you just get off on your little power games seeing how fast you can get a big dumb colonial on a leash?”

“I don’t fuck anyone who thinks it’s about control.  You want a navigator who’s into that and I can send you back where you came from,” Keeler said, standing there with his arms crossed, frowning up at Encke, who glared back down at him.  He wasn’t about to force the issue, but one of them had to be in charge between them, and he wasn’t going to get pushed around by a navigator, especially not with the threat of getting transferred back down and fuck only knew what would happen to him then, all the other fighters with Bede and Nereid circling for the kill once he was back belowdecks.  “So were you going to teach me a lesson or not, fighter?” Keeler said, flat and mocking.

Encke’s hand curled on the wall next to Keeler’s head, his level look just daring Encke to try something.  “You smug little shit, I’ll show you who—“

“If you’re going to do it, you might as well kill me after because all hell is going to come down on you either way.  What’s it worth to you?”

“Jesus fuck, you _are_ fucking crazy,” Encke spat, shoving away from him, pissed at everything for sticking him with the crazy ones every time.  Keeler watched him with flat eyes, and whether he looked pleased or pissed, Encke couldn’t tell, but Keeler had won this one.

“Then remember to take your dramamine tomorrow, because I was going easy on you today,” Keeler said, and Encke spent the night glaring up at the bottom of Keeler's bunk.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The always-delightful Puck is [A2MOM's OC,](http://www.fanfiction.net/s/8864348/1/First-Impressions) and so is the not-so-delightful [Kratos.](http://www.fanfiction.net/s/8931646/1/)

Patrol the next morning wasn’t as bad with the dramamine, and Encke was grudgingly grateful for Keeler and his pills, especially after he saw Keeler down half a pill himself.  Bede watched them across the hanger, raising an eyebrow as Encke followed out on Keeler’s heels, trailing him out of the hanger to his office.  Watched him the day after and the day after, as Encke’s stomach heaved every time he climbed out and put his feet on something solid after Keeler’s acrobatics, still not able to keep up, but not about to let anyone see it.

It was a fucking boring routine, but at least it was a routine, and one that meant Keeler hadn’t decided to kick him back belowdecks for being an asshole.  Fly the patrol, fly routine hull inspections, get flipped around and shaken to hell when they scrambled during an attack and then put his boots on the deck, one in front of each other, hurrying to keep up with Keeler’s sure stride toward his office after to run and rerun the recordings, to go over and over again what had gone wrong and who needed more training.

The only breaks in routine came when something bad happened, when fuel lines leaked, when some team started a fistfight after patrol because one ship clipped a little too close to another on the return, when Encke had to wade in and break heads and let Keeler breeze off to the nice quiet of his office while Encke was left to deal with the bullshit.  Barely a week and he was already sick of the job, sick of Keeler and sick of not being good at something for the first time in his life.

He caught up with Keeler after the fistfight was sorted, rolling over in his head the ways to pick a fight over Keeler’s rough landings, sure he’d be able to win this one with the mechanic’s report about the metal stress in the landing struts being in favor of a softer landing. 

He found Keeler in a quiet corridor on the way to central, pinned against the wall by some fighter and practically being fucked in public.  Encke put a hand on the fighter’s shoulder to shove him away, ready to give Keeler a piece of his mind.  Then felt like an asshole as soon as he caught Keeler’s relieved look, covered quickly by Keeler’s blank professionalism.

“Take a walk, brother, you’ll get your turn,” Kratos said, turning back to Keeler with a wicked look.  Encke spun him back around and punched him in the mouth.

“Get the fuck away from him and don’t you ever fucking touch him again,” Encke snapped, shoving Kratos against the wall, looking forward to beating the shit out of him.  Another break in the routine, but a good one, no consequences and no guilt if he took out his frustrations with Keeler by covering Keeler’s back.

“Fuck, what’s it to you?” Kratos demanded, trying to shove his hands away.

“I’m your new fucking lieutenant and that’s _my_ fucking navigator.”

Kratos cursed and Encke brought back a fist to break his teeth in, but Keeler stopped him with a soft order.  “Let him go,” Keeler said.  “I called the MPs, he’ll get a week in the brig.”

Encke glared over his shoulder at Keeler looking neat and unruffled again, like this kind of thing happened all the time, but there were the two MPs looking dour and Encke had to stop himself from standing to attention for them.  So he shook Kratos one more time, pissed at him and Keeler and himself, and shoved Kratos at the MPs.

“You got pussy whipped fast,” Kratos sneered as they led him off.  “Lieutenant.”

Keeler brushed past him before Kratos was even gone, ready to leave it at that, but Encke followed him back to his office, not going to leave it at just that, not when it would get around before lunch how Keeler had humiliated him again.  Didn’t even have to lift a finger, Keeler had him on a short leash and he’d have no fucking authority by the time it got around.

“The fuck was that?  You want to get felt up by assholes like that?” Encke demanded as soon as the door closed, not dumb enough to pick a fight in the middle of central, but not smart enough to just let it drop.  He glared around Keeler’s office, bigger even than their room, with little desks for assistants and racks for data storage and displays covering the walls, a real office instead of some little closet with a desk jammed in it.  He hated that fucking place, hated having to be in it and be reminded that Keeler was more important and more necessary than he was.  “It hasn’t even been a week and you try to undermine me one more time—“

“What good do you think it does, chasing everyone off _your_ navigator?” Keeler asked, settling into his chair, his desk three times the size of Encke’s, covered with empty coffee cups and scribbled notes, tablets and monitors, all open to something different and inscrutable.  Keeler frowned and flicked something away off one of the tablets, a photo in the jumble of engine schematics, distracted for just a second until he turned his eyes back on Encke and kept him pinned there.  Like a fucking raw recruit, brought up in front of the sergeant to be made an example of.

Encke stayed standing, torn between the ingrained habit of standing to attention for the lieutenant and not wanting to give Keeler any deference to use against him, between needing the upperhand of size and intimidation and just wanting to sit the fuck down and get off his feet.  “It’ll teach him to keep his fucking hands to himself and not grope you up in the fucking hallway,” Encke snapped.  It should have been fucking obvious, unless Bede was right and Keeler was just begging to get felt up by anybody.

“And what about the next fighter who tries it?”

“He’ll have better heard what happened to the first one or—“

Keeler cut him off, talking over him quietly like Encke hadn’t even said anything.  “What about the next navigator he tries it on?  Or the next time he’s there and you’re not?”

Encke glared across the desk at Keeler and kept his mouth shut, because he knew exactly what happened when he turned his back.  Six had ended up dead because of it.

“If they’re only afraid of you, then I’m only safe so long as you’re there, and all the rest of my navigators aren’t safe at all.  Better for the fighters to be afraid of us rather than just of you,” Keeler said, and Encke would have been more pissed off by it if Keeler didn’t sound so fucking exhausted just saying it, glancing down at his desk like he couldn’t look Encke in the eye and say it.  “Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to see to some things,” Keeler said, turning back to his bank of monitors, and it was a dismissal even if it wasn’t exactly an order.

* * *

Cassius found him a bottle that night and he didn’t ask where.  It was no thirty year scotch and he’d be lucky if it didn’t make him blind, but it was better than nothing.  He and Cassius drank to not being dead yet, and then he dismissed Cassius, since they weren’t friends and it wouldn’t do them any good to pretend they were.

So he got a tray from the mess and ate dinner alone in the empty bare room, no sign that anyone lived in it besides his boots where he kicked them every night, Keeler’s things tucked neatly away in an inverse of the disaster of his office.  If it was lonely, at least he could have a drink and read in quiet, with none of Keeler’s earnest sweet assistants asking if he’d had time to look at those crew reassignment reports and could he kindly initial them and also please hurry up with the requisition orders and had he finished that report on the simulations they’d suggested he send three days ago, all the fucking paperwork he never fucking asked for.

Keeler found him curled up reading in his pajamas like a teenager after crew lights out, the room dark except for his tablet screen and the little light on the underside of the bunk, so late he’d started to wonder if Keeler was coming back at all that night or if he’d just sleep in his office.  Which would have suited him fine, but Keeler looked as fucking done with everyone else’s bullshit as he felt, and he wondered if he’d be as fucked in the head as Keeler by the end of it.

So he held up the glass of shitty liquor.  “You want a drink?”  Better that than drinking alone, or sitting there while Keeler got out the good bottle of scotch and didn't deign to offer him any.

Keeler looked him up and down, looked the bottle up and down, and Encke kept his face blank, waiting for some snide comment about colonial moonshine not being good enough for his highness.  “What is it?” Keeler asked doubtfully.

“Fuck if I know,” Encke shrugged.  “Tastes like licorice and and feet.  You want some or not?”

Keeler took a little breath, and Encke was so fucking sick of Keeler’s bullshit condescension that he almost didn’t believe it when Keeler dropped to sit next to him and waved for a drink.

“It’s been a long day,” Keeler shrugged, starting to unbutton his jacket.  “I’m going to strangle Puck if he nags me one more time about the requisition orders, I’m so tired of initialing things I could scream.”

“Which one’s Puck?” Encke asked as he got up for their one other glass, the one Keeler had had his expensive whiskey in the other night.  He gave it a quick rinse in the bathroom sink, so Keeler could appreciate every fine note of whatever colonial bathtub ouzo Cassius had scrounged up.

“The annoying one,” Keeler called over the water.

Encke brought the glass back and settled back on one end of the bunk, a warm little boat of light in the dark room.  “Doesn’t narrow it down much.”

Keeler snorted.  “The _chipper_ one,” he said as Encke poured.

He handed Keeler the two fingers of ouzo, watching his reaction.  “Yeah, that little shit needs to tone it down a couple pegs.”

Keeler gave him a half smile and knocked back his liquor.  He made a face but didn’t cough.  “Ugh.  It really does taste like feet, doesn’t it?”  Encke just shrugged, didn’t say anything when Keeler held out his glass.  Didn’t think anything of Keeler glancing down at his tablet while he poured until Keeler said something about it.  Then he wished he’d closed the novel when Keeler came in, but none of his other navigators had been so damn nosy.  Or none of them had cared to look.  “Are you really reading Anna Karenina?” Keeler asked.

He shouldn't have let it get to him, shouldn't have let Keeler get a rise out of him so easily, but it just never fucking stopped, snide little remarks here and there, putting him in his place.  “Not as dumb as I look, am I?”  He handed the glass back, hoping Keeler would take the hint and knock it back fast, let them both go to bed and stop trying to pretend they were friends.

Keeler just shrugged, though, didn’t make to get up and leave him in peace.  “Fighters just aren’t usually much for reading.  Or talking.”

“Yeah?  You ever try talking to one?  Or they only teach you how to yank the leash at academy?”

“I’m not as awful as I look, am I?” Keeler said, and they both looked each other up and down, trying to find an answer for that.

“You ever read it?” Encke asked, changing the subject.  Might as well take the olive branch if there was one on offer, since Keeler hadn’t decided to transfer him yet.

Keeler shrugged again, sipped at his ouzo this time.  “Watched part of it and turned it off.  I don’t like tragedies,” Keeler said.

Encke cast around for something with a happy ending.  “What about Pride and Prejudice, or, uh, Great Expectations?” Encke tried.  “Or Middlemarch?”

Keeler gave him a look, halfway between laughing and disbelief.  “Have you read anything less than a thousand pages long?”

Encke shrugged.  “Midsummer Night’s Dream?  They don’t give us a bunch of fucking calculations to do in off-hours, there’s not a whole fuck of a lot else to do besides read.  Dickens is boring as fuck, but Dumas is pretty good, lots of swordfights.”

“But Shakespeare, really?  You’ve read Shakespeare?”

“Cheaper than porn,” Encke said, trying to make a joke of it and not be offended that Keeler thought he was too dumb to read in the first place.  He was from Earth, they all thought like that.  Encke just never usually had to talk to a navigator long enough to deal with it.

Keeler gave a choked little laugh, trying to keep some distance between them, and Encke pretended he hadn’t noticed, pleased with finding some kind of personality in there.  He poured them both another drink, fingers brushing Keeler’s as he handed the glass back.  Keeler looked at it thoughtfully, glancing up at Encke and back down, thinking something over.  “Anything you’d recommend?” he asked.

“Taming of the Shrew,” Encke said with a straight face, wondering how long it would take for Keeler to get the joke.  Keeler had the hair for Katherina, but he was a hell of a Petruchio.

It didn’t take Keeler nearly long enough to get the joke, and Encke should have known better and not been such a dumb fuck.  Keeler shot him a look that could have killed, cold and the walls slamming down again between them.  “I’m not an idiot, I know what that means,” he said, and Encke cursed himself out for being exactly as dumb as he looked.  Keeler stood up, looking disgusted and offended, and if getting shoved against the wall by assholes like Kratos was a regular thing for him, then he had every right to be.

“Meant, uh, meant the other way,” Encke mumbled, not sure how to apologize for it.  “Meant you’d be a good Petruchio.”  He scratched his head, Keeler’s blank look making it even more awkward.  “The guy that does the taming.  Of the, uh, the shrew,” he said, gesturing at himself with his glass.  “Wasn’t a very good joke.”

“No, not really,” Keeler said slowly.  He looked down at the glass still in his hand.

“Look, do you want to just get this over with and tell me to go fuck myself?” Encke said.  “Cause I’m getting pretty sick of the send-you-back-where-you-came-from speech, and it sounds like you are too.”

Keeler took a breath, not looking at him.  “Scipio’s already been reassigned, but you could go back to being an Atlas or a Dante or a Samson, you don’t have to be Encke.  Do you want to transfer back?” he asked, still looking at his drink.  

“Fuck yes.  If I’d known what a fucking hassle this promotion was going to be, I’d have told you to go fuck yourself the first day.”

“Oh,” Keeler said, turning his face toward the dark of the room, and Encke got ready to be told to have his shit out by morning.  “You’re good at it, you know,” Keeler said quietly.  “You’ve kept up better than any of the rest.”

“That’s a fucking lie,” Encke said.

Keeler just shrugged.  “I’ve had a couple fighters, I think I’d know the difference,” he said, and Encke wondered what else he meant by that.  Keeler wasn’t so bad when he wasn’t trying to put on a front for somebody, they could have made it work that way.  Both of them would probably be less tense if they got laid, anyway, and even if it made things messy in the longterm, they could stop snapping at each other in the short term.  Or at least fight for different reasons.

Keeler eased himself back down to sit on the bunk, looking exhausted and breakable, hair hanging across the side of his face.  He threw back the rest of his ouzo, and for the first time, Encke could see why everybody wanted to fuck him, or at least say they’d fucked him.  He put on a hardass front, but he was just as run ragged as Encke was, maybe more, and here he was with his jacket hanging open looking so fucking vulnerable.  

So Encke leaned in to kiss him.  Keeler’s breath caught, a little hitch as Encke smoothed a hand over his hair and over his jaw, teasing at Keeler’s cool lips.  Could have been better without both of them tasting like the shitty ouzo, but some of the tension eased out of Keeler, at least.

He moved to put a hand on Keeler’s knee when Keeler pulled away, not looking at him.  “I, um, I don’t think this is a very good idea,” he said quietly.  “I’ve, um, never really done this.  This isn’t a good idea.”

“Baby, it’s okay,” Encke said, stroking his knee.  If all this had been just a scared virgin thing, just a front to pretend like he knew how to be in control, Encke could deal with that.  “I’m not gonna bite you, we can take it slow.”

But Keeler brushed Encke’s hand off, pushing himself up, holding himself out of arms reach and looking more pissed at Encke than he had at Kratos.  “No.  I’m not interested.  Ever.”

“The fuck is wrong with you?”

Keeler glared at him, putting up the walls between them again.  “Nothing’s wrong with me,” he said, and this time Encke knew he’d stuck his foot in it good, even if he couldn’t quite tell what he’d done.  Keeler pulled his jacket tighter around himself for a moment before turning away into the dark of the room.  Encke turned off his lights as Keeler stripped for bed, giving them both some privacy for their separate embarrassments.


	4. Chapter 4

They dressed in awkward silence the next morning, Keeler moving from shower to dresser, braiding his wet hair half naked like Encke wasn’t even there, like the night before hadn’t happened.  Encke made a step toward him, mostly to get a uniform from the dresser, partly to make Keeler look at him, but Keeler just stepped around him, not looking at him, staying out of reach.

“Look, I’m sorry about last night,” Encke started.  “Didn’t think you were a virgin, I just—“

Keeler cut him off with a look, the first time that morning, and it stopped Encke in his tracks.  “You heard everyone else had fucked me, so figured you might as well too?” Keeler asked.  Encke stood there dumb, because of course he’d thought that, but it was something else having Keeler throw it in his face.  “Please, did you think I hadn’t heard?” Keeler asked, shrugging into his jacket.  “Everyone’s heard,” he said quietly, hands busy so he wouldn’t have to look Encke in the face.

“I didn’t mean—“  Encke reached to grab him by the arm, make Keeler stop and look at him again, so they could start this over, without so many fucking assumptions and bullshit, but Keeler just pulled away from him and keyed the door open.

“I’ll see you in simulation this afternoon,” Keeler said quietly, his pale braid falling over his shoulder and brushing his cheek, and closed the door behind him.

* * *

He didn’t see Keeler for days after that, going on almost two weeks with no sign that Keeler had been back to their room.  Would have thought he was dead except for patrol, for simulation, for the briefest of exchanges in the ship before Keeler disappeared into central, his bunk neatly made regulation and orderly day after day as if no one had slept in it.

“Lieutenant Keeler’s _very_ busy, sir, can I make you an appointment?” Puck asked sweetly when he made to walk into Keeler’s office after patrol.  Encke stood toe to toe with the little shit, shorter even than Keeler and hard as rock candy, sweet as could be.  Puck just smiled vacantly up at him, and they both knew how fast Encke would get busted down if he tried to push past Puck to demand Keeler see him.

So he let it drop, ignored the glimpses of Keeler he caught as they passed on their way to their separate offices, and just let Keeler’s sweet, earnest assistants take his initials and his paperwork and his frustrations back to Keeler, since he was just one more useless piece of equipment shoved into a closet until some important little navigator wanted something.

“How’s the probation?  _Lieutenant_?” Bede asked quietly a few days later, looking up from his workstation as Encke passed through central for a meeting with the commander.  Encke looked him up and down, wishing he’d thought to assign the asshole somewhere he didn’t have to see him all the damn time.  Harder to keep an eye on, but better for his blood pressure.  He made a note for Cassius to assign Bede’s squad extra laps and made his appointment with the Commander.  No reason to get pulled into a pissing contest with someone who didn’t matter, at least not until Keeler decided to throw him back with the rest of the trash.

* * *

He didn’t hear about it until after, Keeler collapsing in his office alone, late, when he should have been back at the room, when everyone else was gone.  When he should have been with Encke, when he should have had someone to keep an eye on him and make sure he didn't work himself to death.

Exhaustion, medical said, or at least that was what they’d been told to say to Encke.  Overwork, long hours, rest and vitamin supplement necessary, no chronic condition.  He might never have heard about it if Cassius hadn’t tipped him to the rumor going around that he’d walked in on Keeler fucking a navigator and tried to beat the shit out of both of them, giving Keeler a heart attack or a stroke or the vapors or some shit.  As it was, medical seemed to think it was at least likely, sending him to Puck, who sent him to medical, who sent him back to Puck, just trying to track down Keeler and find out what the fuck had happened.

In the end he didn’t have to track down Keeler, when Puck finally walked him back to their room the next night, Keeler looking pale and drawn and pissed off.  He gave Encke a glance and straightened his back, putting on the front.

Puck probably thought he was being real fucking subtle, putting himself between Keeler and Encke while Keeler shrugged out of his jacket.  Encke didn’t miss the way Puck glanced between them, watching the muscles of Keeler’s back move through his undershirt, watching for something, like Keeler needed a goddamn bodyguard or chaperone to protect him from the dumbfuck colonials.

They both pointedly ignored him, Keeler giving Puck soft orders with Puck taking notes, still pushing on whatever engine refit program the navigators were running even though it was well past the end of shift and crew lights out.

“Where the fuck have you been?” Encke demanded when neither of them would say anything to him.

Puck watched him too closely as Keeler got ready for bed, and if Keeler wasn’t fucking Puck, then Puck was fucking Keeler, Encke was sure of it, no reason for them to be so close if it wasn’t true.  Sweet, vacant-faced navigators would suit Keeler, give him someone safe to control and push around, someone who wouldn’t push back.  “It’s not your problem,” Keeler said, not looking at him.

Encke pushed himself up from the bottom bunk, shouldering past Puck’s disapproving frown.  “It’s my fucking problem if you don’t show up for days and end up in—“

“ _I’m_ not your problem,” Keeler said quietly, and Encke took a step back.  He glanced at Puck, who somehow managed to stand up under that look everyday, and the little shit just shrugged.  Keeler waved Puck out, curling up on the top bunk without another word, his shoulders stiff and not sleeping even though he said nothing.

Puck’s message flashed up as Encke went back to his reading, orders from Keeler and orders from his assistants, better to have stayed where he was.  _Doctor’s orders—no undue stress, no unnecessary patrols.  Lt. Keeler will be very busy this week, please see me if you need an appointment._

Or _, fuck off, fighter, leave him alone._

So Keeler went from avoiding him by hiding in his office to avoiding him in their room, hiding behind his glass of scotch every night, two-thirds water and a thimbleful of scotch taken with him to his bunk, where he nursed it until all hours and slept fuck knew when.  No more snide remarks, at least.  Keeler said nothing, so Encke said nothing, so they just did the necessary bare minimum and Encke pretended he didn’t notice Keeler watching him every time they were alone together, watching him just as close as Bede watched whenever they had to be in public together.  

Keeler was blank as ever, and Encke frowned at him the few minutes a day they were alone until he thought better of it, remembering the blank professional boredom Keeler had used to hide behind when that asshole Kratos had felt him up.  So he left Keeler his blankness and his space, wondering how scared Keeler must have been by a little kiss to draw the walls up like this.  Fuck knew what kind of problems Keeler had that got him to twenty-four a scared virgin, hiding behind his assistants and his work to live like a monk.  

But Keeler wasn’t his problem, and he had plenty of other bullshit to worry about besides what the fuck was wrong with him.

* * *

It was waiting for him a few days later, an automated system message from central, could have been anything from a shipwide announcement to a reminder from Puck to file those fucking requisition orders.  He opened it first, so he could tell that little bastard Puck to stop sending him useless crap when he already had enough to do.

A photo of Keeler, pale hair trailing over his closed eyes, a black-gloved hand twisted in his hair.

Sucking cock.

Beautiful and sweet and a fucking liar.  _I’ve never really done this_.  As bad as Fifty, a born liar, sucking cock and playing martyr to get what he wanted.

Encke ground his jaw and looked at it for too long, and he’d have been a fucking liar if he didn’t admit he’d thought about doing exactly that, putting Keeler’s snide mouth to good use, twisting that stupid long hair around his hand and showing him who was in charge.  But someone else had already done that, from the looks of it.

He stared at it too long, so long Cassius came in with reports or disciplinary signoffs or fuck knew what.  Encke deleted the photo out of the message and pushed his tablet across the desk.

“Find out who sent this.”

Cassius took a breath, glancing from him to the message.  “Sir, I don’t think you want—“

“I said find the fucker who sent it and nail his ass to the wall,” Encke snapped, not wanting to hear it or know what Cassius knew about the message.  “I’m not fucking around.  I want him in the brig for unauthorized access and fucking around with security.  Understand me, sergeant?”

“Yessir.”

Encke sat there drumming his fingers on the desk until he was called away to deal with even more bullshit.


	5. Chapter 5

Cassius was fast, but he didn’t have the news Encke wanted to hear.  “You’ve got to be shitting me,” Encke said when Cassius brought him the disciplinary report to sign that afternoon.  “Kratos doesn’t work in central and he couldn’t encrypt a message if his life depended on it, there’s no fucking way he did this.”

Cassius just shrugged.  “Security said it came from his network address and he confessed to it when the MPs tracked him down.  They said they’re dropping it unless there’s evidence of malicious intent.”  Of course there was malicious intent, somebody was pissing around trying to stir up shit, make him beat the shit out of Keeler or mark his territory or fuck knew what.  Just not the kind of malicious intent security cared about, no theft of data or attempts to seed a virus.  So Kratos would get a demotion, time in the brig, and whatever he’d been promised by Bede.

* * *

He found Bede in the hanger late in the shift, taking a smoke break while his navigator bitched about the wiring of their ship.  Cassius followed, hovering just out of range, waiting for orders.  Waiting, Encke thought, in case things got ugly.

“No rest for the wicked, is there, Lieutenant?” Bede asked as he came up.

Encke gestured for him to put out the cigarette, done with all the bullshit and backstabbing.  “What the fuck is your problem with Keeler?” he demanded

Bede smiled lazily as he ground out his smoke, glancing up to where the navigator worked.  “Keeler must have you on a shorter leash than he did me, _lieutenant_ ,” he said, putting just enough sneer in it for Encke to hear it, but not enough to get him for insubordination without looking petulant.  “You haven’t heard about his little pet project yet, have you?  They’re revamping the engines so the navigators can fly them from the nice snug safety of the ship, the little bastards won’t have to risk their purebred asses like us anymore.”  Bede lost the smile then.  “Just load up the ship with a monkey to push the buttons, no more losing precious navigators.  Or get rid of the monkey all together, and then we can be cannon fodder with the rest of the infantry.”

“Fucking around with Keeler isn’t going to stop that if command’s decided it, and who the fuck are you to be pissed off if it makes for less casualties—“

“It was Keeler’s idea,” Bede shrugged.  “Came up with it so none of his precious little navigators would ever have to deal with a dirty colonial ever again, less _navigator_ casualties with no such fucking guarantee for us.  I didn’t sign up to be some dumbfuck dead infantryman, that little shit deserves whatever he gets.”

“You’re gonna be a dumbfuck dead fighter if you don’t quit fucking around with my navigator.”

Bede smiled slowly.  “ _Your_ navigator, huh?  I heard you had a tough time keeping your girlfriend in line in basic, you think you’re gonna do any better with this one?  Or did Kratos’ photo finally give you the balls to show Keeler—“

Encke curled his fist, aching to punch the bastard just once for the satisfaction of it, but all he needed was proof that Bede was talking shit about Keeler or himself.  So instead of punching Bede’s teeth in, he twisted the bastard around by the arm and shoved him face first against his own ship, gesturing for Cassius.  Three months on KP, two weeks of extra training, the maximum he could give out for insubordination without filing a disciplinary report and getting the commander involved.  Bede squawked about it, the navigator bitched about it, and Encke didn’t feel any better about anything.

* * *

Encke sat on the bottom bunk that night, drumming his fingers on his knee while Keeler folded his laundry.  Stripped to his undershirt in the warm room, Keeler pointedly ignored him even though the last fifteen minutes had been the longest they’d spent in the room together not asleep.  Keeler had shit to do, and talking to colonials wasn’t on that list.

He was so fucking skinny, pretty and sweet except for his mouth, and Encke thought more than once about pinning Keeler up against the dresser and making him get over his shyness or snideness or whatever the fuck his problem was.  “Why’d your last fighter ask for a transfer?” Encke asked.  

Keeler shot him a confused look and went back to his folding.  “He didn’t ask for a transfer, I had to have him reassigned.  He was being obstructionist, he refused to help with the engine refit, so he had to go.  I need someone I can work with.”

“He act like an asshole from the start?”

Keeler laughed a little at that, throwing Encke half a smile over his shoulder while he snapped out the wrinkles in the shirt he was folding.   “He was fine at first, just . . . “ Keeler shrugged.  “We didn’t get along, he didn’t like the engine project, so he had to go.”

“That’s not the way he tells it,” Encke said slowly, watching Keeler’s reaction.  Keeler just glanced at him and shrugged again.  A little more tense this time, a little frown, he didn’t say anything to that, avoiding it.  “He said—“

“I can guess, thank you,” Keeler snapped.  “I heard it from him, I don’t need to hear it again.”

“You didn’t transfer him because he got to know you a little too well?”

Keeler froze, steadying himself with fingertips on the dresser.  He took one deep breath, then another, squaring his shoulders, putting his professionalism back on like a jacket, hiding behind it.  “So you finally saw them.  I’m surprised it took this long,” Keeler said, and Encke didn’t want to know why Keeler knew right away what he was talking about.

“The fuck do mean _them_?  There’s other ones?”  Encke stood up finally, wanting to shake the rest of Keeler’s secrets out of him, not quite trusting himself to not do it.

Keeler shrugged, his shoulders gone stiff, not quite looking at Encke but watching him sidelong as he kept busy with his folding, not as precise, his hands shaky.  “A couple.  There’s a video too, I’m told it’s very good.  What’s it matter?”

“Thought you said you were a virgin,” Encke said slowly.

“Why does it matter to _you_?”

Encke glared at his back, because of course it fucking mattered, but there wasn’t any explaining to Keeler why it mattered.  Navigators didn’t understand about maintaining position, not with all their handholding bullshit, and Keeler especially wouldn’t understand with his little harem of assistants, Puck trailing after him everywhere.  “It’s my damn business if it makes me look like a fucking idiot.  Everybody belowdecks says you got one of your fighters transferred after he fucked you,” Encke said.  “Says you told him you were a virgin too, then cried about it after.  You do this for fun, fuck around with people’s lives and throw them out when you’re done?  You planning on doing that to me?”

Keeler’s hands tightened around the shirt in his hand.  “Are you planning on being a rapist?” he asked, his first assumption every time.

“What the _fuck_ does that have to do with it?” Encke demanded, taking a step towards him, pissed off with all his assumptions and contradictions and fucking problems, like any of this was Encke’s fault when he was trying to put a stop to it.  “You don’t want pictures like that going around, file a fucking complaint, having fucking command deal with it like you said—“

“What do you think would happen if I filed a complaint?” Keeler snapped at his laundry, shying away from Encke without looking at him.  “I’d get written up for _conduct unbecoming an officer_ , maybe demoted, for ‘allowing myself be photographed in a compromising situation.’  And nothing else would change.”  Keeler frowned down at his clean white jacket.  “I already tried,” he added quietly.

“So why’d you let—“

“I _didn’t_.”  Keeler looked over his shoulder finally, breath catching when he realized how close Encke’d gotten but not moving.  Scared frozen, and Encke hated him right then for how much like Fifty he looked that last night of leave, sure he was about to have the shit beaten out of him.

Encke glared at him, the full weight of it sinking in.  Keeler took shallow breaths, finally recovering enough to glare back, his front breaking and pulling back up, trying to pretend there wasn’t anything wrong with the whole fucked up situation.  “I’ll fucking kill him,” Encke said.

“Is that supposed to be chivalry?”  Keeler laughed, sarcastic and short, trying to avoid the subject.  “What’s that going to fix?”

“He’ll be fucking dead and you won’t have to think about him any more.  It’ll fix everything.”

Keeler gave him a tired look.  “That’s not how it works.  The photos will still be there, everyone’s seen.”

“What’s his fucking name, at least?  Was it that fucker Bede?”

“It wasn’t Bede, Bede just . . . found out about it.”  Keeler sighed, rubbing his face, and Encke watched him, waiting.  Keeler finally gave him another sigh.  “It was my first fighter, the one I was promoted with, a long time ago.  I don’t know what his name is now, I didn’t keep track of him after the transfer.  I didn’t want to think about him again.”

“Then what _was_ his name, I’ll track him down.”

Keeler glanced at the floor, thinking it over, avoiding something.  “Encke,” he said finally, and Encke couldn’t tell if that was supposed to be a sigh, or an order, or the beginning of something.

“What?” he demanded.  He’d pull it out of Keeler if he had to, he was going to put a stop to all this bullshit and show everybody the consequences of fucking around with his navigator like this.

“That was his name.  Your Scipio already has a new Hannibal, you knew that.  It’s neater to keep the names consistent with the navigator, so—all the ones before you were Encke, all the ones after you will be Encke, you’re all the same.  As long as I’m a Keeler, I’ll always have an Encke.”  Keeler shrugged, lips pressed together.  “It’s just the way things are.”

“That’s . . . pretty fucked up.”

“Yeah,” Keeler said.  Encke looked him up and down for a minute, wanting to put an arm around Keeler like he’d done for Scipio and Caliban sometimes, but Keeler wasn’t so soft as the other navigators, more like a fighter, needing to look like he was in control even when he was breaking inside, and Encke tried to think of what he’d do if another fighter had just told him the same thing.  Tried to think about what he’d want if one of his navigators had taken pictures of him and spread them around.

So he took Keeler’s half folded jacket from him and tossed it on the dresser.  “You need a drink, the laundry’ll be there tomorrow,” Encke said, cutting off Keeler’s protest.  “I definitely need a drink.  No Shakespeare jokes this time.”

Keeler looked him up and down as Encke got out the ouzo and started pouring.  “You promise?”

“Yeah, there’s always more laundry and I sure ain’t folding it for you,” Encke said, just to break the tension, and Keeler finally took the glass with a little half smile.  Encke sat on the bed, Keeler looking for something in the bottom of his ouzo before he sat, almost the full length of the bunk away.  “You ever tell anybody about it?” Encke asked, since he was so shit with dealing with it.

“Puck, some of it, the commander, some of it, the psychiatrist, most of it.  I’m not a psych case,” Keeler said too fast when he caught Encke’s look, and Encke knew he shouldn’t have let it show so easily.  “I wasn’t lying to you when I said I’d never done—that I’d never kissed before, not, um, not when it ended well.  You seem nice enough, I just—I’m not very comfortable with any of that, my first fighter, the one that took the photos—“ Keeler cut himself off, taking another drink.  “He was—pushy.”

 _Pushy_ , Encke knew what that meant.  Six had been _pushy_.  “You mean he was a fucking rapist,” Encke said, hand tight on his glass, swearing he’d find the asshole and break his teeth.

Keeler shrugged, eyes on the floor and looking miserable.  “It was just kissing at first, and then it wasn’t.  I’d never been with anyone before, I thought that was just how things were.  I guess I liked it, he was exciting.  We were—“ Keeler cleared his throat.  “We were in bed one night, and he said I couldn’t keep being a tease, and then he just didn’t stop.  When I went in to report it, the commander said I shouldn’t have been in bed with him if I didn’t want it to happen, so he wouldn’t file a report or give me a transfer.  The . . . photos are from after.”

Encke took a deep breath, feeling sick, finally realizing what he’d seen, sick with himself for thinking he’d want to do the same to Keeler.  Sick thinking about how long he’d looked at it, how much longer he might have looked at it, pissed off with Keeler for being afraid of a little kiss, thinking about what it would be like to have his hand twisted in Keeler’s hair like that.  He took a drink, tried not to think about that.  “How long’d they leave you with him?”

Keeler licked his lips, just a little.  “Almost a year.  Everyone said we were a good team.  I was flying reckless trying to get us both killed.”

“Shit.  Why didn’t you just punch the fucker?  You just lay there and take it every time?”

Keeler glared at him suddenly, and Encke wanted to shake him, not his fault Keeler couldn’t make up his mind whether he wanted to be treated like a fighter or a navigator.  “Do you know how many navigators end up in medical for punching back?” Keeler snapped, sounding pissed, and Encke knew he’d stuck his foot in it again.  “There’s one every couple of months who ‘has a bad fall’ and command never talks about it because it would be _bad for morale_.  There was one in my graduating class who got his nose broken so badly no one could recognize him after he told his fighter no too many times.  He’ll be spending the rest of his life in prison because he cut his fighter’s throat in his sleep.  So yes, I _just took it_ every time.”

Keeler pushed himself up from the bed, yanking his jacket on.  “Where the fuck are you going?” Encke demanded, Keeler not looking at him.  “It’s the middle of the fucking night.”  He got up, putting out a hand to stop Keeler and thought better of it when Keeler shuddered away from him.

“The office.  Unless you need to hear about how hard I got from it and tell me how bad I must have wanted it.  I understand fighters enjoy that sort of thing,” Keeler said, his voice tight as he shut the door between them.


	6. Chapter 6

Encke paced the room, thinking about going after Keeler and trying to apologize even though he wasn’t quite sure for what, but decided against it.  Both of them pissed off and Keeler back to hiding in his office in the middle of the night wouldn’t end well, with a fight or worse in Keeler’s office, a big dumbfuck colonial chasing down a scared, broken navigator.  So he gave himself a headache overthinking it until he finally made himself just go the fuck to sleep, since Keeler was a grown man and didn’t need to be dragged back by the hair.

Didn’t see him all that day, just a glimpse of him as Encke hurried in and out of his own office, Puck closing the door to Keeler’s office when he caught Encke trying to catch a look.  So he took it out on Cassius instead, taking him to run laps until Encke was so fucking exhausted he could pretend he forgot why he should be so fucking pissed with himself.

Keeler came back precisely at the end of shift, sneaking back into his own room when Encke should still have been showering after training down on the fighter’s level, if he hadn’t been such a pussy about it and told Cassius to piss off early.  So he was there when Keeler came back, just out of the shower but thank fuck dressed or it all would have gone even worse than it did.  Keeler stood in the doorway briefly, touching the wall to keep himself upright and Encke saw him stumble just as the door closed.  Drunk, he’d have thought, if he didn’t know better.

Encke wasn’t fast enough, cursing as he reached out and missed, Keeler’s pretty pale hair spilled all over the floor where he’d fallen and his face drawn into a little pained frown, crumpled on his side where he’d tried to catch himself.  Encke crouched next to him, checked his pulse quick and brushed Keeler’s hair out of his face, his skin clammy and too pale.

“Keeler—fuck, Keeler, wake up,” he said, patting Keeler’s cool cheek, not sure whether he should shake him or pick him up or just call medical, but Keeler stirred a little.  Just fainted, then, nothing broken in the fall.  “Come on baby, wake up for me.”

Encke backed off as Keeler’s eyes fluttered and he moved to roll to his side, not quite able to get a hand under himself and push himself up.  So Encke got an arm under him and hauled him up, light as a feather but awkward, sure Keeler wouldn’t have allowed this to happen if he were awake.  Keeler made a little noise of protest as Encke set him down on the bottom bunk, no way of getting him into his own bed, but it was better than the floor.

Encke rubbed his eyes as he went for a damp cloth in the head, sure this wasn’t going to end well once Keeler woke up in his bed.  If he’d been trying not to act like a pushy asshole, it sure wouldn’t look like it now.

“Keeler, come on, wake up,” he said, settling on the edge of the bed next to where Keeler had curled on his side, wiping his face with the damp cloth.

He made an annoyed noise finally, frowning and pushing Encke’s hand away as he came to.  “Puck, I told you—“  Encke didn’t miss the scared look that passed over his face as his eyes came open and he realized who it was, frozen with his fingers on Encke’s wrist and Encke’s hand on his face, close enough to kiss and Keeler knew it.  Then it was gone, Keeler’s facade coming back as he tried to sit up.  “No, I’m fine—“

“Baby, you’re not fine, you fainted as soon as you got in the door.  I’m not gonna hurt you.”  Encke folded the cloth into Keeler’s hand and stood up.  “Unbutton your jacket, I’ll get you a drink.”

He didn’t miss the way Keeler froze up at that, but Keeler was damp with a cold sweat and the jacket wasn’t helping with his breathing, so he left to get a cup of water.  Keeler shied away from him when he brought it back, obediently fumbling with the buttons but weak as a kitten, and Encke tried to keep from touching Keeler’s skin as he helped him out of his jacket.  Tried to ignore the way Keeler shivered and swallowed back something as Encke got up and went to throw it on the dresser.

He fished around in Keeler’s drawer, looking for something to keep Keeler warm against the chill of the air, something to let him hide in, something to put one more layer between them.  He tossed one of Keeler’s sweatshirts back at him, staying as far away as he could in the little room with Keeler half dressed.

He turned his back, to give Keeler some privacy while he shrugged it on, if Keeler needed a little proof that he wasn’t going to get jumped.  He saw the bottle of scotch as he went to close the drawer, tucked in the back behind Keeler’s neatly folded shirts, the only thing out of place in the neat regulation laundry.  He pulled it out, figuring Keeler could use a little comfort, if that was the only personal thing he kept.  Better than ouzo, anyway.

“So’d you pick this up on shore leave or bring it with you?” Encke asked, changing the subject, pouring Keeler a little scotch in their second glass.

He glanced over his shoulder just in time to catch Keeler’s panicked look.  “Don’t—put it back, don’t—“ Keeler tried to push himself up out of the bunk, but fell back, hand pressed to his chest, breath coming short.  He closed his eyes, trying to steady his breathing.

“The fuck’s the matter, I’m just—“ 

Keeler gave him a pained look.  “Don’t, please, it’s—my dad gave it to me the day I shipped out, he said to save him the last drink for when I brought it back.  Just—don’t take any.”  Keeler swallowed hard, glancing away.  “Please,” he said, reduced to begging for this because it was the only thing left no one else had taken from him.

Encke glanced down at the bottle and the glass in his hand, and back to Keeler, superstitious, scared, and desperate, none of his false bravado now, and Encke finally got it.  Keeler, chased out of where ever he’d been hiding after Encke tried kissing him, curled up in his bunk with his watered down scotch, homesick and scared, because Encke had been such a jackass.  In the top bunk to begin with because he’d been expecting another Kratos or Bede, needing even a little protection from being yanked out of his bed with photos of it passed around by whatever asshole fighter he got who was stronger than him.  And Encke hadn’t done much to show he was any different.

Morgan would have liked Keeler, skinny and breakable and in need of coddling.  Encke capped the scotch, feeling like an asshole.  “Baby, I wasn’t taking anything, just getting you a drink.  I’m not—I don’t do that.”  He went to hand Keeler the glass, leaving the bottle on the dresser.  Keeler looked up at him, curled small and pressed as far into the corner as he could, protecting his back and trying to hide behind his knees.

He took the glass finally, fingers brushing Encke’s, icy cold and brittle.  “Oh,” he whispered, curling around the scotch.  He put his nose in the glass, taking slow breaths but not unwinding even a fraction.

Encke sighed and settled on the far end of the bed, giving Keeler some space if he wanted it.  “Don’t you fucking cry,” he said.  “I’m no fucking good at this, so don’t you cry.”

Keeler watched him for a bit, looking for something.  Encke rubbed his eyes, exhausted by this, exhausted by Keeler and all his damn problems and fragility and this whole fucking mess showing him he wasn't good at something for the first time in his life.  “Is basic as bad as everyone says it is?” Keeler asked quietly.

Encke shrugged, guessing what Keeler was getting at, asking if he’d been a Fifty or a Six, if he had any fucking clue how bad Keeler had had it.  “Worse for some than others,” he said.  Worse for someone like Fifty, or Keeler, who looked skinny and breakable and scared.  Worse for someone like Fifty or Keeler, who was broken and scared.  “Depends on if you have anyone to watch out for you and who you piss off,” Encke said, looking at the floor and trying not to think about it too much.

“Was it bad for you?”

He’d been closer to Six, despite all his bullshit of pretending to protect Fifty, and if he explained all that then Keeler would never want anything to do with him.  So he just shrugged.  “Not really.  Other guys had it worse.”

“Oh.”

They sat in silence like that for a while, the numbers on the wall clock turning over, Keeler taking shaky breaths of his scotch and barely touching it to his lips.  Encke sat there trying to think past how fucking exhausted he was, trying not to look as bad as Keeler thought he was, hoping Keeler would move to go to his own bunk once he was calmed down.

“You okay?” he asked after a while when Keeler still hadn’t moved.

“No.”

“Oh.”  Encke twisted his hands in his lap, wishing he was as good at this as Morgan was.  She’d have known what to do and what to say, instead of blundering through and making everything worse like he’d done so far.  “Why’d you pick me?”

Keeler looked for something in the bottom of his glass, slipping back to his bored professionalism.  “You were one of the only ones with a good flight record and no disciplinary reports or complaints from your navigators.  Medical said you handled it well when your navigator slit his wrists and your other navigators seemed to like you.  I thought you’d be different.”

“Am I?”

Keeler didn’t look at him.  Shrugged.  Which meant no, he could tell from the way Keeler still shied away from him, avoiding looking at him but watching every breath he took.

“Am I as bad as your other fighters?”

Keeler shrugged again, sick of this bullshit even with Encke trying to apologize.  “My second fighter didn’t want anything to do with me, he’d heard I . . . caught something, and he made sure everyone else knew it too.  After him, Bede had already decided he didn’t like me, didn’t like the way I talked to fighters, decided that everybody should know about . . . about what happened, so made sure they did when we started arguing.”  Keeler curled tighter, trying to make himself smaller.  “I just want to be left alone.”

“I’m sorry.  About being such an asshole.”  Keeler watched him warily behind his glass of scotch, so Encke fumbled the rest of it out.  “I just—I never.  Fuck.  I said some stupid shit, I’m sorry about it.”

“That’s it.”

Encke glared at him, looking for Keeler’s sneering contempt, sure it was there even if Keeler hugged his arms to himself and glanced away.  “Yeah, that’s it,” Encke snapped.  “What else do you want?  I said I was sorry about being a dumb fuck.”

Keeler sighed, and maybe if it had been the first night Encke would have heard it as snide condescension, but now it just sounded exhausted, tired of all of this shit.  “What should I say, I forgive your sins if you shave your head and say ten Hail Marys?  That we can just start over now?  That’s not how it works.”

“I’d do it.  If that’s what you wanted.”

Keeler laughed, bright and brittle and on the edge of tears.  “I don’t think you’d look very good bald.  Maybe a mohawk.”  Encke scrubbed a hand over his hair, going a little long anyway.  

He tried to give Keeler half a smile without being an asshole about it, not sure what he’d do if Keeler up and left for his office again.  Ask for a transfer, probably, tell command he was resigning because he was too much of a dumb shit to do the job and not piss off Keeler every time he opened his mouth.  Leave Keeler to do this all over again with some other asshole fighter, wondering when he was going to get yanked out of bed.  “Meant leaving you alone and starting over, but yeah, I’d get it buzzed too if you said so,” Encke said.

Keeler looked him up and down, knocked back the rest of his scotch, and put his head down on his knees.  “I don’t care.  I’m tired of this, of all of it.  This isn’t what I signed up for.  Do what you want.”

Encke put his head in his hands, wishing there was someone to beat the shit out of for this, anybody to take it out on and have this shit over and done with.  “Gimme the blanket, then, I’m gonna go sleep in the office,” Encke said finally.  "You take the room, we’ll figure this shit out in the morning.”  He stood up, writing out his resignation letter in his head.  He’d send it to Puck first, so Keeler wouldn’t have to deal with him again.

He stopped with cold fingers on his wrist, Keeler catching him before he could get very far.  “You can stay,” Keeler said quietly, an order but not a dismissal this time.  “We can figure something out, it just won’t be starting over.”

“You okay?” Encke asked as Keeler stood up, eyeing each other doubtfully.  Keeler swayed a little, steadying himself with light fingers on the edge of his bunk.

“No,” Keeler said, and Encke wished he hadn’t asked.  “But I’ve been worse, this is nothing.”  Encke didn’t know what to say to that, so he didn’t say anything, letting Keeler put a hand on his shoulder to steady himself as he climbed the rungs to his own bunk.  He lay awake for a while, listening for Keeler to cry or change his mind and decide to leave again, he wasn’t sure what, but he listened for something until he was sure Keeler was dead asleep, exhausted.  He sat up later than he should have, restless and wishing things were as easy to fix as they had been in basic.


	7. Chapter 7

He was going to do it, he was really fucking going to do it.  Four days to wait for an appointment was too long, gave him too much time to think about it and regret it, but there wasn’t anything to be done about it and he wouldn’t let himself back out on it.  Probably have to break a couple of idiots’ teeth over it if it got around why he’d done it, the leash getting shorter every day, but it was now or never, he’d said he’d do it.  

Encke bounced his knee while he waited, the ship’s barber not moving appointments for neither God nor officer, so Encke just had to sit and listen to him bitch about his bad knee with everybody else.  If he ever wanted a shave and a haircut again for the rest of his enlistment, he’d have to wait in line like everybody else and hope Cureus wouldn’t spread it around too far why the lieutenant was getting a skunk stripe.

His turn in the chair came too fast even after all that.   “Shave the sides, leave the middle.”

Cureus gave him a look in the mirror, peering over his bushy mustache and through his even bushier eyebrows.  Word was he kept the soup strainer to hide a wicked knife scar across his mouth he’d gotten during his first tour of duty, twenty or forty or a hundred years ago.  “Are you fucking serious?” he asked.

“ _Yes_ , I’m _fucking serious_ , just do it.”

He watched Cureus shrug and sharpen the straight razor.  “Whatever you say, son.  Flowers do it for most boys, though, might want to try that next time instead.  Must have been a hell of a fuck up to deserve such a sweet apology.”

Encke bounced his knee.  “Would you just shut the fuck up and do your job?” he snapped.  Nerves, fucking nerves, he could never watch his mouth when he had the fucking nerves.

“Free advice, son, generally it pays to be polite to the man standing behind you with a razor blade.”  Encke glared at him in the mirror and tried not to hiss when the razor grazed a little close to his ear.  Cureus gave him another look in the mirror, so Encke shut his damn mouth before he said anything else stupid.

* * *

Cassius didn’t say anything to the haircut, just gave him a glance and handed him the day’s schedule, ignoring the way Encke ran his hand over the stubble as they walked, uncomfortable with it.  Marked out practically with Keeler’s name written on his ass if word got out why he’d done it, but if he had any luck then only Keeler would ever know.

Keeler eyed him when they suited up for patrol that afternoon, Encke running late as usual after busting heads in training, Keeler mostly dressed and struggling with the back zipper of his flight suit when Encke hurried in to the officers’ locker room for their squad.  “You’re late,” Keeler said, as if it wasn’t obvious from the squad noisily starting to empty out of the crew locker room.

Encke tripped in the doorway, definitely not staring at Keeler’s ass or the way his pale braid glowed against the black flight suit.  Out of his white fatigues Keeler was skinnier, small enough it looked like Encke could have circled his waist in both hands, but harder, less fragile, less soft.  Half dressed like he was and all Encke wanted to do was slip his hands over Keeler’s skin, too fascinated with the difference between his hard flight suit and the soft skin under it.

He looked away, making himself busy with getting into his own flight suit.  “This doesn’t fix anything,” Keeler said, looking pointedly at Encke’s shorn scalp.  He leaned his exposed back against the wall as Encke stripped out of his fatigues, tossing his jacket and undershirt in a pile, trying to doubletime it into his flight suit while ignoring the way Keeler watched him warily.

He sat to pull his zipper up, arching his back to reach it.  “I know,” Encke shrugged when he finally got it on the second try.  “But you said to do it.”

“I never—“ Keeler stopped, frowning.  He shook his head and turned his back, lifting his braid out of the way.  “Zip me up,” he said instead, and Encke tried not to stand too close or take too long as he helped Keeler pull on his professional facade, hiding the pale curve of his back and all his problems behind the convenient lie of the black flight suit.  Keeler turned and glanced up at him as they left together, with something that could have been a smile.  Encke thought he managed to not look too pleased with himself.

* * *

If he was going to make it work, he knew it was going to take more than a mea culpa haircut.  Encke stopped in front of Puck’s workstation the next day, ignoring the way the little shit tongued his lip ring, lewd and vulgar.  He’d never have let any of his men show up to duty with it, but then fighters were smart enough to avoid putting shit on their faces that would just get ripped off in a fight.  Navigators didn’t have to worry about that shit, and Encke didn’t wonder about where else Puck had piercings.  “You.  My office.  Now.”

Puck gave him the wide-eyed innocent look, flipping pink bangs out of his eyes, glancing from Encke to Cassius.  He pursed his lips.  “Lieutenant Keeler is _very_ busy, sir, I can’t just—“

Encke put his hands on Puck’s desk and leaned down.  “Puck, anybody ever tell you I’m a lieutenant too?  And that _once in a while_ , lieutenants are allowed to give secretaries orders?”

“Sir, lieutenants might be able to give _secretaries_ orders, but I’m Lieutenant Keeler’s _administrative assistant_ , so—“ 

“Get your ass in my office and shut up,” Encke snapped, just shy of slamming his hand on the little shit’s desk.  They both glanced at Keeler’s door, waiting for the real orders, but Keeler didn’t make a protest, so Puck was stuck.  Encke turned and walked away, not waiting to see if Puck followed but grateful Cassius did.

Puck stood uneasily in the tiny office, glancing from Cassius to Encke and back, ready to bolt and not bothering to hide it.  Encke waved for Cassius to leave the door open, to prove they weren’t planning to skin him and eat him.  There wasn’t quite enough room, Puck giving them both an empty, pleasant look, chipper and blank and nervous, keeping half an eye on Cassius looming behind him.

Encke crossed his arms over his chest, leaning back in his chair.  Cassius knew enough of this bullshit already, knew every damn thing on the ship it seemed like, and he could only hope Puck would be as discreet.  Probably not a good chance of that, but the little shit fawned over Keeler, so that might encourage him to keep it quiet.  

So Encke sighed and pushed on with it.  “I want you to tell Keeler I’m an asshole, but I’m trying to not be such a dumbshit all the time,” he said.  Puck choked, his vapid smile breaking as he looked back at Cassius to see if this was real.  “But I have never in my life not been good at my fucking job, so you’re going to sit down and tell me everything I’ve ever done to piss off Keeler and how not to do it again.”

Puck glanced between them, tonguing his lip ring again, and Encke finally realized it was a nervous thing, not a come-on.  And then felt like an asshole.  Wished he didn’t have to deal with navigators, since fighters were simpler, didn’t get nerves, didn’t have all these bullshit coverups for what they were thinking, these little nervous facades to pretend they weren’t scared or worried.  And then felt like an asshole again, because he knew that wasn’t true, he just knew how to read fighters better.

He let Puck think, the little pixie shifting his weight from foot to foot, making up his mind about something.  “Permission to speak freely?” he asked finally, and Encke wished for once he could say no, since he’d probably never get another chance to tell Puck to keep his opinions to himself.

But then he’d never figure Keeler out, or how to make the whole shitty situation worked.  So he waved Puck at a chair, bracing himself.  “You’re not gonna be much use if you don’t.”

Puck dropped into the one other chair, looking far more chipper than could be good news for anyone, and started counting off on his fingers.  “Well, first of all, that haircut isn’t doing anyone any favors.  Second, Keeler doesn’t like it when you smoke with the fighters, everybody can smell it and you’re not as good at hiding it as you think you are.  Third, when you have to get his attention, don’t grab him, he doesn’t like that.  Don’t touch him at all if you don’t have to.  And don’t ever, ever move anything around on his desk, you might think you’re doing him a favor organizing it, but he knows exactly why every single dirty coffee cup is there and he _will_ make you put them all back.  Actually just don’t touch anything on his desk at all.  Fourth, stop kicking your boots off and just leaving them, put them under your bunk, it’s a small room.  Fifth, don’t ask him where he’s been, if it’s your business he’ll tell you—“

An hour later, Encke rubbed his eyes, head aching from Puck’s increasingly chipper recitation of Keeler’s instruction manual.  Somewhere along the line he’d lost track of the numbered list, just letting Puck’s list of _don’t_ s wash over him.  “Is there anything I _can_ do around him?” Encke asked when Puck paused for breath, looking up at the ceiling and tapping his fingers against his lip piercing, thinking.

“He likes doing crossword puzzles, but he’s _terrible_ at the literature clues,” Puck said, giving Cassius a sly glance.  Cassius shrugged, and Encke made a note to himself to let Cassius deal with Puck and his chattiness from now on, if Cassius enjoyed gossiping with him so much.

“Is that all?” Encke asked.

“Hmmm . . . hair, coffee, smoking, laundry, schedules, music, yelling, crosswords, liquor, boots, showers . . . no, I think that’s about it,” Puck said thoughtfully.  “But I can always tell you if you do something else wrong.”  Of course.

“Good.  Thank you,” Encke said, relieved to be done with this dressing down.  Puck started to get up, Cassius shepherding him out the door.  “Cassius, show—“

Puck stopped in the door, almost barreling Cassius over as he tried not to run into Puck. “Oh!” Puck said too brightly.  “And also he loves it when you initial your reports right away and turn in your requisition orders before deadline—“  Encke tried not to look too grateful when Cassius shoved Puck out the door.

Silence, finally.  “Permission to add something?” Cassius asked in the quiet.  Encke glanced at him, shuffling back through his actual work but curious what Cassius might have picked up through gossip.  “I also heard Lieutenant Keeler hates it when you give everybody extra laps.  Sir.”

Encke glared up at him, but couldn’t keep hold of it when Cassius just shrugged.  So he scowled to keep from smiling and waved Cassius out; he’d have probably tried it too if their positions were reversed.  “Smart ass,” he said to Cassius’ back.


	8. Chapter 8

They got the orders the week after that; moving out for Colteron territory, everyone on edge with the risk of it.  They’d either turn the war or never come back, and Encke put his mind to getting his fighters up to snuff before he had to deal with the new squads shipping in and all the problems they’d bring.  No use borrowing trouble, but short of putting them all on a leash, running them all ragged was the best he could do until the new squads came in.  A week at best, to prepare for the first real challenge of his new command.  

At least Keeler knew what he was doing, even if Encke didn’t yet.

Keeler was curled into the corner of the top bunk when Encke made it back with his dinner, gone cold for how long the mess had let it sit out, but better than nothing.  He set it down on the dresser and stripped down to fatigue pants and an undershirt, Keeler peering down at him from the top bunk, watching him warily, stripped down to boxers and an undershirt himself, all long bony legs and big pale eyes.  He sat curled up with a glass of scotch and his computer in the half dark looking miserable.

“You okay?” Encke asked, eyeing the glass.  He didn’t think he’d done anything lately, but here was Keeler, nursing his watered-down reminder of home.

Keeler hugged an arm to himself and shrugged, glancing away, trying not to give away too much of his anxiety.  “It’s just—getting the new squadrons in, it’ll—“ he sighed.  “It’ll be a lot of adjustments for everyone, while we get into position.”  He frowned down at his scotch, and Encke frowned with him, thinking he got what Keeler meant.  New squads, new fighters trying to prove their position, new people for Bede to circulate the photos of Keeler to.  All of Encke’s stress plus going through what Encke, and Bede, and the Encke before him, and the Encke before him had all done, all of it getting dragged out all over again, and nothing James could do about it.

“What you watching, baby?” he asked, changing the subject.  He could at least try to take Keeler’s mind off it while they figured out what to do about it.

Keeler blushed a little, glancing at the screen.  “Um.  Twelfth Night.”  Encke raised an eyebrow and Keeler pulled his knees up, putting more distance between them.  “Cassius told Puck you were reading it, and I was just—I was just curious,” Keeler finished quietly.  “Puck said he played Feste in high school.”

“Of course he did,” Encke said, wishing he could give that little shit extra laps, but that would probably just make Puck even more chipper, the little bastard.  He leaned on Keeler’s bunk, peering to see which production it was.  “That’s a good version of it,” he said.  “You mind turning the volume up so I can hear while I get my mending done?  I got nothing else to listen to tonight and fuck knows when we’ll have time for it again.”

“Do you want to watch it with me?” Keeler asked quietly, just as Encke was turning away to get his sewing kit and his dinner.  He half turned, not sure he’d heard right.

“You—uh,” he started, hit poleaxed dumb again.  “That’s real nice, but it’s alright—“

“If you don’t want to,” Keeler said, and Encke kicked himself.

“I do.  I—uh,” Encke hurried, Keeler giving him a look somewhere between confusion and a laugh.  “Yeah.  You, um, you want to sit down here?” he asked, gesturing stupidly at the bottom bunk.  Nowhere else for the both of them to sit besides the floor, but with everything—

Keeler hopped down from the top bunk before Encke was even done sputtering, managing to be graceful with a glass of scotch in his hand and a three foot drop where he stepped off the rungs.  He grabbed his computer down from the top bunk and settled it on the dresser as Encke got out his sewing kit and grabbed his dinner.  Their arms brushed as Keeler went back to sit on the bunk, not as pressed to the far end as he could have been, and Encke somehow managed to not trip over himself with the distraction of Keeler’s warm proximity.

The second act opened as Encke wolfed his dinner, half starved and half trying to not spatter it all over Keeler.  “ _Will you stay no longer? nor will you not that I go with you?_ ” Antonio asked on the screen, Keeler sipping his scotch.

“ _By your patience, no_ ,” Sebastien answered.  “ _My stars shine darkly over_

_me: the malignancy of my fate might perhaps_

_distemper yours; therefore I shall crave of you your_

_leave that I may bear my evils alone: it were a bad_

_recompense for your love, to lay any of them on you_.”

Encke risked a glance at Keeler, who looked near to bored or asleep, knees pulled up to his chest and doing his best to ignore Encke even though he’d done the offering, and Encke wondered if this wasn’t a bad idea.  Things between them would have been easier if they could just ignore each other and each other’s problems, because fuck knew Encke had enough to deal with as it was.  

He set aside his dinner just as Antonio finished the scene, following Sebastien out, and Encke only then realized just how deep in the shit he’d gotten himself.  

“ _I have many enemies in Orsino's court,_

_Else would I very shortly see thee there._

_But, come what may, I do adore thee so,_

_That danger shall seem sport, and I will go_.”

He made himself busy with his mending, whipping together the torn seams and unpatched elbows commissary wouldn’t have time to get to soon if ever.  Easier to concentrate on busy work, easier to concentrate on simple things that didn’t ask anything of him, than it was to think about what exactly he’d gotten himself into.  Keeler watched him sideways and pretended not to, his eyes but not his interest on the screen.

“Could you—“ Keeler started about a half hour later, a tense half hour of Malvolio and Toby Belch’s bumbling failings, and Encke snapped his thread in surprise.  “Could you put a button on for me?” Keeler asked.

“Sure thing, baby, you want to grab it?  ‘M almost done with this,” Encke said, squinting in the half light to tie the knot where he’d snapped the thread.  

Keeler unfolded himself slowly, padding across the little space in the half light, silhouetted by the screen, and Encke only realized then that he hadn’t shut his drawer all the way when he’d pulled his sewing kit out.

“Oh,” Keeler said, lifting a stuffed bear out of Encke’s open drawer.  Battered, it needed a mending, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it, needing Morgan to do it even though he was a grown-ass man now and not the whimpering twelve-year-old Morgan had picked up from the police station.  “ . . . What’s the J for?” Keeler asked, cutting through the loud noise of his heartbeat in his ears, tracing the faded J dragged across its belly in marker.

Encke thought about that for a while, Keeler holding his whole childhood and his whole life in his hands, the one thing nobody had seen since he moved out of Morgan’s and joined the service.  “What’s his name?” Keeler asked eventually, probably guessing the reason for Encke’s silence.  Too personal to share that, even after everything he knew about Keeler, because Encke as an asshole, and Keeler wasn’t.

“Noodles,” he said, trying to make up for it.

Keeler gave him a look like he hadn’t heard right.  “What?”

“Um.” Encke cleared his throat, trying to cover his nerves.  “Noodles.”

Keeler pressed his lips together, trying not to smile, and Encke tried not to be grateful for it.  “That’s um, that’s a good name,” Keeler said.  “It’s sweet,” he added quietly.

“I’m James,” Encke blurted.  It was the only thing he had anything like what Keeler had told him; it was nothing, but it was the only part of himself Keeler couldn’t just look up from his computer, the one thing Keeler couldn’t just ask an assistant to dig up about him.  “What’s your name, baby?” he asked, before he thought better of it.

Keeler’s shoulders stiffened, turning away.  He tucked Noodles back in the drawer and closed it carefully.  “Don’t call me that.  It’s demeaning.”

Encke opened his mouth and thought better of it.  Thought for a second about what he’d do if anybody besides Morgan ever called him _baby_ , especially someone twice his size, but he’d never gotten fucked by anybody, always been the bigger one, the stronger one, the _pushy_ one, and would have punched somebody’s teeth out even at fifteen when he started messing around with skinny boys after school.  Hadn’t been short enough since he was thirteen for anyone but Morgan to even think it.  

So he shut his mouth and didn’t say anything, because Keeler was right.  “Sorry,” he said finally, waiting for Keeler close his computer and draw up the walls between them again, maybe for good this time, but then Keeler was crossing the little space again, handing Encke a white jacket.

“Hector,” Keeler said, pretending not to watch Encke sideways as he sat again, so Encke pretended not to notice, clipping the dangling button away and threading the needle again.

“’S a pretty name,” he tried after a while.  “The one that fought Achilles.”

“The one that got killed,” Keeler said flatly.  Encke kept his hands busy with the sewing, wondered if Keeler knew Hector had been a sacrificial lamb.  “I never read it all, but my mother got me a copy of the Iliad when I was twelve.  I, um, decided I didn’t like reading after I got to all the ships.  I sort of quit and just did a search for my name.”

“He’s the hero, though,” Encke said, trying to salvage something.  “He changed everything, even Achilles.”

Keeler just shrugged.  “Dead heros are still dead.”  

Encke frowned, didn’t have an answer for that, so he just folded Keeler’s jacket away, its button back practically like new.  Only Keeler would ever know the thread was a little different color and not quite regulation neat, but it was the best he could do.  “You okay?” Encke asked, Keeler sitting there silent watching him.

Keeler licked his lips, glancing from Encke’s mouth to his eyes, thinking about something.  Then leaned in and brushed a cool, paper dry kiss on Encke’s cheek and scooted closer, shrugging under Encke’s arm until they both sat there frozen, backs to the wall with Encke’s arm across Keeler’s shoulder.  “Is this okay?” Keeler asked finally.

“Um.”  Keeler was more solid than he’d imagined, and not so brittle, taut muscle even if Encke could have put his hands around Keeler’s waist.  He swallowed hard and felt his palms go sweaty.  This was nothing.  If Keeler could manage to get over being scared of him, if they could both face down this tour together, he could manage to not fuck this up too badly.  He hoped.  “Yeah, this is—uh, this is good,” Encke said finally, not sure what Keeler expected from him with this.

But Keeler just relaxed against him as Act Two rolled on, and Encke sat there stiff, hoping he wouldn’t find some new thing to add to Puck’s list of _don’t_ s.  Keeler smelled different this close, like clean laundry and coffee, and Encke wished he’d gotten the time after busting heads in training to take a shower himself, sure he stank from running laps with Cassius.

“ _She never told her love,_

_But let concealment, like a worm i' the bud,_

_Feed on her damask cheek: she pined in thought,_

_And with a green and yellow melancholy_

_She sat like patience on a monument,_

_Smiling at grief. Was not this love indeed?_

_We men may say more, swear more: but indeed_

_Our shows are more than will; for still we prove_

_Much in our vows, but little in our love_.”

He didn’t really realize Keeler had fallen asleep against him until Act Three had started, the tense lines of his pale forehead finally relaxed as his cheek pressed against Encke’s shoulder, the deep circles under his eyes sunken darker in the blue light off the computer screen.

Encke rolled the shoulder without Keeler leaning against him, chilled on one side leaning against the metal wall and warm on the other side where Keeler’s warm body curled against him.  He watched Keeler’s pale eyelashes flutter on his cheek, Viola and Olivia bickering on the little screen.

_“I prithee, tell me what thou thinkest of me.”_

_“That you do think you are not what you are.”_

_“If I think so, I think the same of you.”_

_“Then think you right: I am not what I am.”_

_“I would you were as I would have you be!”_

_“Would it be better, madam, than I am? I wish it might, for now I am your fool.”_

Keeler sighed and Encke froze, not sure what he could be doing wrong to ruin this, but sure he was doing something.  He held his breath as Keeler stretched against him, waking up a little.  Keeler looked up at him then, and Encke tightened his arm around Keeler’s narrow shoulders without thinking about it.

“It’s late,” Keeler said finally, glancing at the clock.  And then it was Encke’s turn to go tense as Keeler traced the line of his collarbone through his shirt, Keeler’s fingertips cool through the fabric.  “I should—we should get to bed,” Keeler said, and Encke was just nodding his agreement and pulling his arm away when Keeler leaned in to kiss again, slow this time.

It was chaste and awkward, Encke too shocked to take the lead, letting himself be pushed back gently as Keeler straddled him.  He had a half second of hot embarrassment over how fast he’d gotten hard, but then Keeler was rocking into him, their teeth clashing awkwardly and he could feel how hard Keeler was too.  Encke smoothed a hand over Keeler’s back as Keeler cupped his face, gentle and clumsy at the same time.

“It’s late,” Keeler breathed finally, pulling back.  Encke nodded dumbly, hands on Keeler’s waist and fighting the urge to put a hand in Keeler’s hair and pull him back.  Keeler leaned in for a short kiss, though, brief and warm as he started to get up.

Encke watched him close the computer, left sitting there on his bunk hard and alone and frustrated in the full dark now, Keeler padding silent past him to hesitate at the rungs for the top bunk.  Keeler reached out a hand to brush his shoulder and Encke caught it, kissing Keeler’s cool palm, but let him go.  It was late, and they both had plenty else to worry about in the morning.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Noodles is stolen from [Seberu](http://seberu.tumblr.com/) and [JustEight](http://justeight.tumblr.com/post/41611426826/all-the-feels-that-spawned-this-and-some-that-came); there's a picture of him [HERE](http://justeight.tumblr.com/post/41613109305/i-threw-on-a-blue-filter-and-liked-it-a-little-bit). For this storyline, only the teddy is part of this, though.
> 
> And the lovely and talented [Melonopoppolus](http://mel-onopoppolus.tumblr.com/) made me cry and did an art of this. 


	9. Chapter 9

He watched Keeler dress in the morning, bleary tired even though Keeler looked about as chipper as Puck, giving him shy smiles and a quick, chaste kiss as he re-braided his hair.  Encke had lain awake half the night kicking himself for getting this involved, even if it had seemed like a good idea at the time, because it certainly didn’t seem like a good idea with his cock hard and no privacy to even sneak into the head and jerk off, and now Keeler comfortable enough to flirt but not make a move.

“I have meetings all day, but if you want, we could have lunch at the office—“ Keeler said, coming to lean on the wall next to the bunks as he buttoned his jacket, Encke watching him blurrily.

“What about now?” Encke asked, putting his hand behind Keeler’s knee, tracing circles through his uniform.  “You got time before breakfast?”

Keeler gave him a smile, flushed to the collar of his jacket.  “I can make time,” he said, easing down to straddle Encke’s lap and cup his face again.  Encke undid the button he’d sewn on the night before, smoothing his hands over Keeler’s warm undershirt.  Keeler tilted Encke’s face up, his fingertips cold under Encke’s jaw, his thumb brushing over Encke’s lips.  

The kissing was better this time, only a little awkward clicking of teeth, and Keeler let his mouth be teased open just a little, his tongue cool just like the rest of him.  Encke shrugged Keeler’s cold hands away, pushing his jacket open so he could get at Keeler’s warm throat better, nose pressed below Keeler’s ear and mouthing his faint pulse.

Keeler rocked against him, tentative, balancing himself with one hand on Encke’s shoulder and one hand brushing the back of his head, tickling at the stubble.  So Encke took a risk and put a hand on Keeler’s thigh, moving slow, rocking Keeler into him as he kissed Keeler’s warm ear.  Keeler didn’t make a sound but eased into it, bending his head and pushing cold fingers under the collar of Encke’s shirt, so Encke risked a little more and finally grabbed Keeler’s ass, the first time after all that time, and Keeler pulled Encke’s face back up to kiss.

So he pushed Keeler a little more, feeling him get hard, and Encke fumbled with the button of Keeler’s pants.

Took his hands away quick as if he’d been scalded when Keeler drew back.  “I don’t think—we shouldn’t—“

Encke stroked Keeler’s arm, frustrated and hard himself but trying to be gentle.  “Baby, it’s okay, I didn’t mean to push you—“

Keeler took a deep, shuddery breath, shaking his head.  “It’s not that—I’ve never been tested for—anything.  Medical won’t test except in cases of—unless there’s been a report filed, and I . . . never filed one.”  Never had been allowed to, never got the chance to.  Keeler’s jaw tightened and he glanced away, ashamed of something that wasn’t his fault, and if Encke had thought it would fix anything, he’d have marched into the commander’s office then and punched the asshole in the face.

But it wouldn’t have fixed anything, so instead he licked his lips, thinking, leaning back with one hand on the mattress and one hand on Keeler’s waist.  Trying to keep Keeler from bolting, if he was being honest.  “Well, you’d know if you had something, not like it hurts when you p—“

“Hepatitis, herpes, syphilis,” Keeler listed, taking a breath to steady himself.  Of course he knew these by heart, had probably had plenty of time to think about it.  “ _HIV_.”  Encke took a deep breath too.  All the serious ones, the ones hard or impossible to get rid of.  “No symptoms, no rape, no test,” Keeler finished with a little shrug, and started trying to get up, buttoning his jacket and closing himself off.  “I’m sorry, I should have said something sooner.  It was selfish of me.”

“Keeler,” Encke said, catching Keeler by the waist again, catching himself before he said _baby_.  “You got nothing to be sorry about.  I don’t care, we’ll figure something out.”

Keeler gave him a sideways look, leaning away but appraising, thinking about it.  “Like what?”

“Don’t know, there has to be condoms somewhere on this ship, and if we get out of this tour, we’ll get tested together somewhere on shore leave.  What we were doing was good,” he said, reaching up to trace the line of Keeler’s jaw under his hair.  If he was being honest, it was more likely he had something than Keeler did, because fuck only knew what he could have picked up from Fifty.

Keeler smiled then and leaned down for a slow kiss, not so awkward this time with Encke taking the lead just a little, stroking Keeler’s jaw with his thumb.  “I’ll see you for lunch?” Keeler asked, breaking away.  Encke let him go, changing fast as Keeler left, throwing Encke a quick shy smile over his shoulder as he shut the door.

* * *

He was fairly sure he wasn’t supposed to ask his sergeant to go looking for contraband condoms, but he rationalized that it was a public health issue, a matter of keeping the officers healthy during a time of war.  And if it meant finally getting laid, by fuck he’d find any goddamn condoms on the ship if it was the last thing he did, even if it meant having Cassius turn over every shipping crate of supplies for contraband and buying off every stoner on the ship with booze and a promise to look the other way on recreational use.

Keeler met him in the door of his office at precisely noon, holding his own lunch tray and Cassius standing behind him with one for Encke.  He gave Cassius a glare and told him to go update the crew roster with the incoming squads, something to keep him busy since he apparently had enough time on his hands to help arrange lunch dates.  Cassius shrugged and went back to his workstation outside Encke’s door, but Encke caught Puck’s eager glance as he closed the door.

The two of them alone in Encke’s office was different than being alone in their room, or in Keeler’s office with the door open.  It was smaller for one thing, their knees brushing under the desk, and Encke realized for all the times he’d been in Keeler’s office, disaster area though it was, Keeler had never been to his.  Because there wasn’t really anything in Encke’s office, no special servers, no displays, nothing besides a place for Encke to sit down for fifteen minutes and initial things for Puck while he thought up semi-illicit errands for Cassius to do.  Keeler had no reason to ever need to be in Encke’s office, except now to see Encke, and that made even the bland soy protein mess sent up seem palatable.

It was closed-door lunches in Encke’s office every day after that, and if Cassius knew as much as Puck did with his raised eyebrows and not-so-surreptitious thumbs-up to Keeler when he though Encke wasn’t looking, at least Cassius didn’t let on.  Not that he really cared, not when he had Keeler sitting across the desk, rambling on about the engine project and rubbing the tip of his shoe against Encke’s instep, chaste and teasing without thinking about it.  And especially not when Keeler sat on his lap after, laughing at the awkwardness of trying to do a crossword puzzle together on Keeler’s tablet without falling out of the chair.  Encke just put his hands on Keeler’s thighs and his chin on Keeler’s shoulder, taking whatever quick intimacy they could get on a stolen half hour lunch in the office.

* * *

Cassius took three days to find condoms, taking his sweet goddamn time to find the biggest, most embarrassing box possible.  

**_MAGNUM 48CT VALUE PACK!_  **

Encke grabbed them out of Cassius' hand as soon as he realized what the box was, throwing it in his desk drawer and slamming it shut, craning around to make sure Puck hadn’t seen anything through the open office door.  But then, Puck had probably found the damn things and handed them off to Cassius.

“Don’t you have reports to finish?” Encke snapped, face flushed hot.

Cassius shrugged and started to leave, discreet as always, and Encke cursed under his breath.

“Cassius,” he said, just as Cassius stopped in the door and stood there waiting for orders.  Encke ground his jaw.  “You didn’t have to do this.  I owe you.”

“I know,” Cassis said, with another shrug and a smile this time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the behind-the-scenes of Cassius and Puck's antics in this chapter, see [Cassius' Scavenger Hunt](http://archiveofourown.org/works/689345) by [chollarcho](http://archiveofourown.org/users/chollarcho/pseuds/chollarcho).


	10. Chapter 10

Couldn’t smuggle the damn big box back to the room in his flight suit, good for leaving nothing to the imagination and bad for anything remotely useful.  And Keeler demanded to know why he was trying to slip out of the room with a jacket and a sweatshirt on, so they snuck back to Encke’s office together like teenagers after dinner, Keeler giggling like mad when he saw the box and giggling even harder when Encke stuffed it under his jacket and sweatshirt to hide the outline of it.  

Encke made him quit his laughing once they were in the elevator, pulling Keeler against him to kiss and ignoring the sharp corners of the cardboard box being crushed into his ribs.

Keeler got shy once they were in the room again, but not nearly as shy as Encke, not sure how fast or what to push for.  And Keeler had seen him naked once, that second night of being paired together, but never since, not even since their little lunch dates in the office.

So he stood there dumb and let Keeler take the lead, goosebumps pricking on his arms once he was out of his condom-smuggling layers, with Keeler’s cold hands sliding up under his shirt.  Keeler smiled up at him, shy and bold at the same time, and Encke helped him out of his jacket again, pressing his nose to Keeler’s hair.  

He was shakier than when he lost his virginity on scrawny Adrien’s couch when he was sixteen, because if this time there was no risk of Keeler’s mother walking in and catching them, he wanted Keeler worse than he’d wanted any of the other skinny boys he’d fucked, and couldn’t figure out how to do it without breaking him.  Keeler kissed the side of his throat, leaning on Encke as he kicked out of his boots.  Encke held him by the waist and finally let Keeler help him out of his shirt, both of them so fucking awkward with not knowing how to do this.  

They fell into bed half dressed, Keeler almost kneeing him in the balls and laughing nervously before Encke pulled him down to kiss.  They both relaxed into just kissing, not so much pressure with the familiar awkwardness of it instead of the new awkwardness sitting in a box on the floor.  Keeler hesitated for half a beat when Encke’s hands strayed to his ass, but sat back and started to unbutton his fly, glancing at Encke through his lashes.

“Would you go down on me first?” Keeler asked, hesitating.

Encke felt his face go hot, could see Keeler flush just as hot in the dim light from the upper bunk, and Encke pushed himself up far enough to catch Keeler’s lip and kiss him hard, even if it hurt his back to strain at the bad angle.  “Whatever you want, baby, anything.”  If it was going to be Keeler’s first time, his real first time, Encke could forget about how much he hated sucking cock for one night and make it good.

Keeler smirked and leaned down to put his mouth next to Encke’s ear.  “How about not calling me _baby_ ,” he murmured, and Encke shivered looking up at him, wondering how much of his soul he’d have to sell to get Keeler to say it again.  Shuddered again when Keeler rubbed his cock through his uniform, quick and barely there if he didn’t need this so fucking bad, and then Keeler was stripping out of his shirt and pants, Encke trying to get out of his without kicking Keeler in the face and mostly succeeding.

Then there they were, lying chest to chest with Keeler on him, all skinny legs and skinny ribs, every single one of his vertebrae standing out under Encke’s hands, practically a xylophone.  Encke stroked his back, fingering the band of Keeler’s boxers.  

Keeler didn’t make a sound when Encke pushed them off him finally, his ass warm and the muscles of his thighs hard as Encke stroked the back of his knee.  Keeler didn’t make a sound when Encke rearranged them, nudging Keeler to sit against the head of the bunk so Encke could kiss a trail down Keeler’s skinny bare chest, stroking his cock harder.  He kissed the inside of Keeler’s knees, grazing his teeth over the soft skin inside his thighs, Keeler silent except for his breath coming faster.

Encke somehow managed not to fall out of bed hunting for the box of condoms, getting one open after too long, and Keeler just watched him with big eyes as he rolled it on carefully.

It tasted awful, worse than he remembered come tasting, and that was something.  Some horrible medical taste, plastic and fake cinnamon mixed with menthol, like an advertisement for abstinence.  It made his tongue feel awful, tingling and hot all at once, so he spat on his hand, kissing Keeler’s warm thigh while he stroked his cock, trying to get the taste out of his mouth.  Keeler didn’t seem to mind, eyes closed tight and breath short, and this way Encke could watch him get close.

So he was watching when Keeler opened his eyes again, and Encke could have come just from the look on his face alone, so fucking beautiful in the half light.  “Could you . . . do it harder?  Just a little?”  Keeler bit his lip, anxious and beautiful, like there was anything Encke could say no to then.

He tightened his hand, licking his lips so he could suck Keeler deeper, raking his teeth over the smooth tip of Keeler’s cock, doing it again when he caught Keeler’s sharp hiss, the only sound he’d made almost all night.  He grabbed Keeler’s ass, holding him steady as he clumsily flicked his tongue, trying to remember every good blowjob he’d ever gotten and give it to Keeler, and failing miserably at it.  

Or he thought, until Keeler came with a little whimper, curling over Encke with his hand curling against Encke’s scalp.  Encke kissed his thigh and belly, pulling the condom off carefully and tossing it in the trash next to the bed.  Keeler pulled him up to kiss, his hands straying down tentatively, and Encke shoved out of his own underwear finally, sure it wouldn’t take any time for how fucking long it’d been.

They rearranged themselves so Encke could lean against the wall with Keeler straddling his lower legs, not the most comfortable thing ever, but no room for anything else unless he kicked Keeler out of bed to kneel on the cold floor.  Keeler watched him open another condom and roll it on, both of them breathing slow.  Encke hissed with Keeler’s cold hands tracing over his belly and thighs, but Keeler made up for it with warm kisses across his shoulders and down his chest, down and back up, trying to work up to it, changing his mind, and Encke had almost made up his mind to just stroke himself off when Keeler finally went for it.

It wasn’t as good with the condom, or it wasn’t as good with Keeler, no warmth and barely any pressure.  And Encke felt like an asshole almost as soon as he thought it, but it was hard to concentrate on anything besides how slow Keeler was.  He felt one of Keeler’s hands curl against his thigh and fumbled for Keeler’s other hand, lacing their fingers together, trying to think about something besides how long this was going to take.

He stroked Keeler’s gorgeous pale hair, brushing it away from where it tickled his thigh and where it hid Keeler’s face, needing to see him.  “Don’t,” Keeler said suddenly, sitting up and leaning away, shoving Encke’s hands off him.  “Don’t touch my hair,” he said, and Encke winced, trying not to think of the photo, with someone else’s black glove in Keeler’s hair, wishing he’d never seen it.  

Encke took a deep breath.  “Sorry, b—sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry, just don’t do it,” Keeler said with a little smile, and leaned back down to press a chaste kiss to the inside of Encke’s thigh.

Keeler was slow again, and first too soft, then too hard, his back teeth grazing the tip of Encke’s cock when he tried to swallow too far, fumbling and not quite picking up a rhythm.

“C’mere,” Encke said finally, trying to be nice about it, but he’d go soft with much more of Keeler’s hesitance.  He pulled Keeler up to lay against his chest, better once he could put an arm around Keeler’s shoulders and kiss him hard, Keeler not so slow and soft with his hand on Encke’s cock.  Could have been better with both of them not tasting like the goddamn condoms, but with Keeler stroking him and clumsily trying to rock in rhythm with him, it was good enough.  He finally came, the condom making it uncomfortably different.  He pulled it off with a snap, wincing, and didn’t notice Keeler starting to get up with the distraction of trying to land it in the trash.

“You can stay here, baby,” Encke said, trying to catch him by the waist, to pull him back.

“There’s no room,” Keeler said, giving him a kiss on the cheek and sliding out of his grasp.

* * *

Encke tried the next night, after what twice in a row was getting to be routine.  Awkwardly falling into bed, Keeler coming fast and Encke taking forever, frustrated with Keeler’s shy clumsiness but not able to say anything, Keeler getting up right after to go to his own bed.  But Encke thought he’d figured it out, fucking around with the bunks for too long after Keeler left for his shift, running so late Cassius called the room to check up on him.

“Could put the mattresses on the floor, the bunks snap up,” Encke mumbled, stroking Keeler’s thigh.  He figured they snapped away to make it easier for maintenance to hose out if anyone blew their brains out on the walls, but Encke didn’t mention that part.

Keeler shook his head.  He pulled his undershirt on without saying anything, shrugging Encke’s hands away where he tried to slide them up under his shirt.

“Why not, baby?”

“Do you need a reason besides I don’t want to?” Keeler asked softly, and Encke sat up.

“No, I just—it’d be nice, is all.”  _Cuddling_ was too pansy-sweet to say, but that was exactly what he wanted, for Keeler to just stay and be there when he woke up, someone warm and soft and predictable the closer this mission into enemy territory got to reality.

Keeler looked over his shoulder, thinking about something.  Leaned in for a quick kiss and then he was gone, back to his own bunk like every other night.

* * *

He managed to keep his mouth shut about the other thing until the night before the transfer shuttle docked.

He lay curled around Keeler, trying to pretend that if they stayed like that long enough, Keeler wouldn’t get up and moved to his own bunk for once.  And he should have just kept his fucking mouth shut and been thankful for what he had, Keeler’s warm bare ass pressed against him after jerking each other off, but it was hard to think straight with his nose pressed into Keeler’s tangled hair and holding him like that.

He didn’t think there’d be any harm in asking.  “Next time, you wanna actually fuck?” he mumbled against the back of Keeler’s neck.

Keeler sat up suddenly, jostling Encke against the wall.  “I don’t want to do that.  Ever. It hurts.”  Keeler swung his legs off the bed, looking for his clothes in the dark.  “Why can’t we keep doing other things?”

“Baby, it’s not supposed to hurt, not if you do it right and take it slow.  I’ll show you,” Encke said, running his hand over Keeler’s thigh, trying to sound reassuring.

“No,” Keeler pulled away, shaking his head with hair falling in his face, but Encke could see him closing himself off already, putting up the wall and going blank.

Encke caught him by the wrist, fumbling it out before Keeler could yank his hand away.  “Do you—want to fuck me?” he tried, looking for some way to fix this, trying to offer something.  He didn’t really want to, but sucking it up and doing it a couple times had taught Keeler sucking cock wasn’t so bad, so he could manage this too.

“I said no,” Keeler said, his voice level but Encke could feel him freeze, leaning away as much as he could without putting up a fight.  Letting whatever Encke was going to do to him happen, not fighting it for fear of how much worse it would be.  

Encke let him go.

Keeler hurried into his boxers, yanking his shirt off the floor and rushing into the top bunk as fast as he could without it on, hurrying as fast as he could without exactly looking like he was running, which was exactly what he was doing.  Encke lay on his back with an arm over his eyes, trying to look as unthreatening as possible.  Didn’t want to think about Keeler looking like Fifty again in the morning, curled up tight in the corner of the top bunk and wondering when Encke was going to beat the shit out of him.

“I didn’t mean—“ Encke sighed once Keeler was safe in his own bunk.  “I meant, if you wanted, we could do it with you, you know . . .”

“ _What_ ,” Keeler snapped in the dark, hiding behind anger so Encke couldn’t hear how scared he was.

“Meant with you, you know, topping?” Encke tried, uncomfortable with having to talk about it.  He’d never had to talk about it before, always been the one that did the fucking, and he’d never thought he’d have to get fucked.  

But it couldn’t be so bad, if Fifty and all his other navigators had gotten off on it.  Keeler wasn’t that big, so it probably wouldn’t hurt.  And he wouldn’t even have to like it anyway, if it proved to Keeler that Encke wouldn’t hurt him.  They could just do it that way a couple times, switch, and never have to do it again once Keeler realized he liked getting fucked after all.  

“So do you want to fuck me or not?” he snapped at the ceiling, frustrated that he had to spell it all out.

Keeler poked his head over the edge of his bunk finally, frowning down at Encke in the half dark, barely visible except for his pale braid hanging down.  “You mean with _me_ inside _you_ ,” Keeler said slowly, like it was distasteful or he couldn’t quite believe it, which was exactly how Encke felt about it.

“ _Yes_ ,” he snapped.

Keeler stared down at him in silence, too dark to see what he was thinking.  “Have you done it before?” he said after a while.

“No,” Encke mumbled petulantly, wishing Keeler would quit dragging this out, or that he’d never offered in the first place.

When Keeler finally said it, it was so quiet Encke almost didn’t catch it.  “So you want me to take your virginity?”  

He thought about that, propping himself up on his elbows, straining to see Keeler in the dark.  All he’d ever thought about was trying to be gentle for Keeler’s first time, but this was a different kind of first time, for both of them, and he’d never really thought about losing his virginity with someone fucking him.  “Yeah, I guess so,” he said finally.  “If you want to do it.”

Keeler pulled back from the edge of the bunk then, disappearing back into the dark and Encke threw himself back on the mattress, frustrated and pissed with Keeler for making him say all of it only to shoot him down.  He listened as Keeler rustled in his bunk, starting to climb down.  Probably to go sleep in the office again, ask for a transfer, and tell Puck to tell everyone that the big dumbfuck colonial had begged for it up the ass.

So he didn’t move when Keeler came around to stand next to Encke’s bunk, holding his pillow.  “Move over,” Keeler said, putting his knee on the bunk to nudge Encke over.  If it hadn’t been dark, Keeler might have caught him staring gape-mouthed as he scooted over, still naked as Keeler tossed his pillow down and lay down still dressed.  Keeler carefully put his head on Encke’s shoulder, skin cool through his shirt as Encke put a hand on his back.

Encke breathed carefully, waiting for Keeler to decide what he wanted.  Waited so long that he realized Keeler was asleep, curled against him in the narrow little bed.


	11. Chapter 11

Encke saw him on the crew roster before he saw him in person, reviewing personnel records in his office before briefings. 

Cain and Abel.  One—fuck, _Bering_ , fuck him, _Commander_ Bering now—had never been very subtle.

The birthdate caught his eye, and he cursed under his breath.  The stupid little shit had been sixteen in basic, fifteen the first day with his birthday the second day, and if Encke hadn’t already felt like an asshole after everything, he sure as hell felt like an asshole once he realized that.  Happy fucking birthday, Fifty, get bent over a sink by some stranger in the middle of the night and slapped around after.  He’d thought Fifty had been a scrawny early sign up at seventeen, not that that made any of it any better, not with what he’d been pushed into pushing Fifty to do for Six and Eleven and Nine.

He tried and failed rationalizing that he’d only been nineteen himself, but that didn’t make any fucking difference.  If he’d found out about some nineteen year old asshole fucking one of his fifteen-year-old little foster siblings he’d have killed the fucker.  He rubbed his eyes, wishing he’d stopped and thought about any of it then, even though Fifty had probably talked his way past the recruiter with a fake ID or on his knees.  

Not that that was any excuse for fucking a scared fifteen year old kid.

If it hadn’t been him, though, it would have been someone else, and Fifty would have been even worse off with Six or Nine or nobody to watch his back.  James had done the best he could by him, and Fifty’s own fault for throwing it away by sneaking around behind his back.  James had done better by him than anyone else would have, and better than Fifty had deserved anyway by the end of it.

Twenty-two now, filled out some and not quite so fucking skinny, but still not very big from the looks of his roster photo.  Blue hair and a different earring, cute with playing at dangerous, if Encke didn’t know how he’d gotten out of basic.  Commendations left and right, a couple disciplinary reports, shuffled around to different navigators every other month.  Good at killing shit, bad at playing well with others, not much had changed.  And bad fucking luck for his navigator, if Bering’s little joke of a name was anything to go by.

Encke ignored them in the back of the briefing that afternoon, Fifty and his little sidekick Thirty, and Encke was a liar if he said he wasn’t surprised Fifty was still getting fucked by Thirty after all this time.  Figured that Fifty would have found someone bigger and meaner to fuck him, but word was Thirty was just as dangerous with a knife as ever and Fifty always had gotten off on pain.

But Fifty wasn’t his problem any more, and so long as he didn’t make trouble, Encke wouldn’t ever have to deal with him.

* * *

The second briefing could have gone better, Encke rushing in late only to come up short with One—Bering—giving him a bemused look where he leaned back in his chair.  Keeler glared up at him, oblivious to everything except Cook’s glare at them both.  Their assistants gave him sour looks behind the commanders’ chairs, short hair and long hair, and his head was so full of Cassius’ notes on which of the fighters were going to be problem cases that he could barely remember their room number, let alone what Cook and Bering's assistants' names were.

Keeler kicked him under the table as he sat down, shoving a sheet of paper at him. _Be late again and I’ll kick your ass_.

Encke barely choked back a laugh, keeping his face straight as Cook’s assistant glared him down, Bering’s going on about squad configurations.  So Encke gave them both a level look, the picture of serious professionalism as he dug out a pen to tease Keeler. _Is that a fact?_

Their fingers brushed as Keeler yanked the sheet of paper back.  _YES! >:(_

Keeler shoved it back at him, fingers brushing Encke’s thigh under the table and trying to look serious as Cook gave them another glance, pulling up maps.  Encke listened with half an ear as the briefing meandered on, Bering cutting in to talk over Cook, going on oblivious to the pointed glares he was getting for interrupting.  He doodled Bering pontificating, scribbling in the beard.

 He caught Keeler watching him, bored out of his head with the pointless blather too, distracted with the doodling.  _Briefings are boring being lead fighter sucks._

_Stop, we’ll get caught._

So Encke scribbled in the line of Bering's eyebrows darker. _Blah blah blah,_ Encke added around Bering’s fat little head, Keeler choking on a laugh.  He took the sheet away and Encke expected it to disappear, but Keeler carefully sketched out a very unhappy Cook, glaring through his little round glasses.

Encke reached across Keeler, scribbling on the paper and trying to look like he was still paying attention. _You’re fired!_

 _“Scythe._ Is there something amusing you’d like to share with the rest of us?” Cook snapped, glaring at the sheet of paper between them.  Encke swept it under his tablet, Keeler scrabbling to grab it away.

“No sir,” Encke said smoothly, Bering rolling his eyes behind Cook and their assistants exchanging glances behind their backs.

“Can we get on with it, _Commander_?” Bering murmured, and Encke thought he caught Cook flush as he turned away.  

Keeler kicked him under the table again when no one was looking and Encke just squeezed his knee.  He drew circles on the inside of Keeler’s thigh until he made Keeler blush guiltily, pushing his hand away, but not before lacing their fingers together and giving his hand a squeeze.

* * *

He went back to the room that night, late after crew lights out, expecting to get his ass chewed out for dicking around during the briefing, but if Keeler was going to scold him by shoving him against the door as soon as he walked in and tearing his flight suit off him, he’d make sure to goof off more often.

He grabbed Keeler’s skinny ass and picked him up, Keeler’s legs around his waist and cold hands cupping Encke’s face as they stood there in the middle of the room, cold air prickling the hair on the back of his neck where Keeler had started to undo the zipper of his flight suit.

“The fuck got into you today?” Encke laughed, Keeler backing off just enough to let him get a breath.

He hissed as Keeler started shoving his flight suit down off his shoulders, the cold air hitting him as hard as Keeler’s warm body pressed against him.  “I decided I didn’t want to die a virgin, if this all goes like they say it will,” Keeler said into his neck.  “Did you mean what you said last night?”

Encke leaned back, trying to get a good look at Keeler, flushed and hands twisted on the collar of Encke’s flight suit, embarrassed and scared.  “Yeah,” he said finally, brushing his lips against Keeler’s ear.  “Yeah, of course I meant it.”  He eased Keeler down on the bottom bunk, stripping out of his flight suit as Keeler tossed his own jacket away.  Encke climbed after him naked, Keeler biting his lips as he looked up with big eyes.  

He was so fucking gorgeous, skinny and breakable and perfect, watching Encke’s mouth as he undressed Keeler slow, kissing every new inch of skin.  He ran a hand over Keeler’s tight thigh, kissing his hip, stroking his cock, trying to make this as good as possible for Keeler even if he was having trouble getting hard for the thought of it.

Keeler was all lean muscle and skinny legs, gangly and too many bony joints in the bed as they tried to sort out how they were going to do it, and Keeler took a shuddery breath when Encke finally straddled him.  Keeler soldiered on, though, giving Encke a shy smile as he fumbled for a little bottle of lube, and Encke somehow managed not to groan with embarrassment now that he knew for sure Puck was involved.

 _Lipsmacking sweet green apple, love’s forbidden fruit!_   Perfect with the cinnamon condoms, probably.

Another minute of awkward fumbling as they juggled the lube back and forth, and then a condom, and then the lube again as Encke slicked Keeler and then himself.  Keeler scattered little cold kisses across his chest as he tried to spread himself open, not ready to let Keeler do it, even if what they were about to do was the same and worse.  He was clumsy with it and a little shaky, trying to relax and tell himself that it wouldn’t be that bad, plenty of people liked it, but some guys liked getting fucked and some didn’t, and he didn’t need to do it to know he didn’t.

Keeler was patient, trying to tease him harder with slow kisses along his throat and fingers stroking his thighs, but Encke couldn’t get it up for nerves, so he nudged Keeler’s hand away.  Better to get it over with sooner rather than later, show Keeler it wasn’t that bad so Encke could show him how much better it would be the other way.

It fucking hurt, he knew the first couple of times hurt, but he just never thought it hurt that much.  Like being stabbed in the balls, sharp pain easing off into a dull ache and then shooting back up into his stomach with every tiny move Keeler made, not thrusting but trying to push himself up to kiss.

Deep breaths, it was all about getting through the pain and dealing, he managed to run four miles a day and ignore the pain of old scars and new bruises, so he would manage the pain of this too.

Keeler watched him dead silent, not moving a muscle except to stroke Encke’s face and neck with light fingers.  They somehow finished like that, Keeler quiet and tentatively tugging Encke down for a kiss as he came.  Encke rearranged them so he could pull Keeler over to lie with his head on Encke’s chest, and he nudged Keeler’s wandering hands away, gone soft and not interested in getting off from sex for the first time in his life.  Keeler would be a good fuck once he got over being scared, and they wouldn’t have to do this more than a few times.  

He thought Keeler was going to fall asleep like that, head on his chest and feet tangled together in the little narrow bed, and when Keeler finally pushed himself up to go to his own bunk, he tried not to wonder if he’d done something wrong.  Keeler didn’t say a word, pulling on one of Encke’s undershirts and brushing a dry kiss across his cheek before he climbed into his own bed.  

Still no trust after all that.

* * *

And of course he had to deal with Fifty, because of course the dumb little shit was just as much trouble as he always had been.

As if Encke didn’t have enough shit to deal with anyway besides bailing out his skinny ass all over again, Fifty picking fights with assholes twice his size trying to claw his way up even when it meant busted ribs.  Encke let Cassius deal with the first couple fights, not interested in dealing with Fifty or his little sidekick Thirty.  But Fifty just kept at it, stubborn and self destructive, trying to get himself killed, trying to fuck everything up, and probably would have kept at it if Encke hadn’t stepped in to keep him from getting his ass kicked, just like always.  He tried to give Fifty a chance, but the little shit fucked it up trying to claw his way off the bottom again, instead of just staying where he belonged.

Then it was Encke’s turn to fuck it up, fucking Fifty in the showers after because everything had been simpler between them than it ever would be with Keeler.  No condom that time or the time after or the time after, because Encke was a dumbshit and never planned for any of it to happen.  But he probably already had anything Fifty did, and he told himself it was fine since Keeler was protected from it anyway.  Tried not to think about it when Keeler curled against him for a few minutes every night.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Like Noodles, I stole the little note scene from [JustEight](http://justeight.tumblr.com/post/41613673440/and-because-im-a-tease-here-3-be-late-again%22). All my best ideas are stolen from other people.
> 
>  


	12. Chapter 12

“ _Say it_.”  Encke slammed him back against the wall, hand twisted in his hair. 

Fifty snarled in his face, trying to bite but jerked back by the hair as Encke fucked him harder.  “ _Fuck you_.”  So Encke did, pinning Fifty between him and the wall, letting Fifty’s hair go to shove one of the little shit’s knees back as far as it would go, holding him up with one hand on his ass.  

He bit Fifty’s ear, still half dressed with Fifty naked and barely slicked.  Fucked him rough, not caring about the way Fifty’s blunt nails dug into his bare shoulder, trying to hang on as Encke pounded him against the wall.

“Do it, baby, come for me, _say it_ —“ 

Fifty snapped his teeth again, snarling and vicious and his cock rubbing hot between them.  “Fuck— _harder_ —“ Fifty gasped finally, arching his back against the wall.  “Fuck you, you bastard, bend me over and fuck me harder—“

Encke turned and threw him on the desk, not bothering to pretend to care when Fifty hissed and winced as he hit hard.  Just flipped him over and hauled his ass up, pushing into him again.  He was so fucking skinny, still just as fucking beautiful as he had been in basic even if he was more dangerous now, skinny and breakable and perfect.

Fifty scrabbled for his hand, yanking Encke’s hand off the desk and shoving it on his cock, pushy for how much he bitched about this.  Encke laughed and jerked him tight, like in basic when it had been good, when he’d cared whether or not the crazy little fuck had enjoyed it or not.  And when Fifty came with a snarled curse and a moan through his teeth it pushed Encke over the edge too, fucking him through it, dragging it out.

He dragged lips across the back of Fifty’s neck as he finished, wanting to flip him over for a kiss but sure he’d get bitten.  “Tomorrow night, half hour earlier,” Encke said, pulling out finally.  He gave Fifty a slap on the ass and threw his clothes at him.

Fifty yanked his clothes back on almost as fast as he’d torn them off, glaring daggers at Encke, and Encke wasn’t so sure he wouldn’t have pulled a knife if he thought he could get away with it.  “The fuck am I supposed to tell my navigator about this, sneaking into central every single night—“

Encke gave him a look.  “ _Fifty_.  Do I look like I give a fuck?  Figure it out,” he said, sitting to pull on his shirt.

Fifty stopped, jacket twisted in his hand between them.  “Why should I?  Your new _bitch_ not putting out, Eight?” he spat.  “Everybody says he has you on a short leash, maybe he wants to hear all about this—“

He stood up, grabbing Fifty’s face to shut him up.  “Leave Keeler the fuck out of this.”

“Or what?  You’ll fuck me til I learn to follow orders?” Fifty sneered, and it almost staggered Encke back a step with how much he looked like Keeler that second night, hiding behind a sneer to keep from showing how scared he was.  “Didn’t work last time, you think it’s gonna work this time?  I’m not afraid of you,” Cain said slowly, and they both knew that had always been a lie.

He shoved Cain against the wall, not interested in thinking about it.  “Be here tomorrow night or you will be.”  Encke left Cain there in his office, didn’t look back when he heard the metal rattle as Cain kicked his desk.  Sacha had always wanted to make officer; not Encke’s fault the only way the little shit was ever going to get behind an officer’s desk was by whoring himself for it, like everything else.

* * *

Keeler was watching something curled up in the top bunk when he made it back to the room.  “What you watching, baby?” Encke asked, slinging off his jacket as he came in the door, sore from training and sore from fucking Fifty.  He rolled his shoulders, wincing with the raw marks from Fifty’s nails.

Keeler flushed to the tips of his ears, trying to close his computer and failing, too flustered to hit the pause button, and Encke laughed when he realized Keeler was as hard as he’d ever seen him, curled up in his bunk watching porn.  “Is it that good?” Encke asked, going to lean on Keeler’s bunk to see what it was.  “Anything I should watch?”

Keeler didn’t say anything, looking mortified as Encke realized what it was.  Two blondes, air brush pretty, but . . . women.  Naked, but kissing, and not much else.  Encke gave Keeler a doubtful look.

“You just—you didn’t seem like you liked it last time—the last time we—I’m not very good at sex,” Keeler said all in a rush.  “Puck said to watch something.”

“Yeah, but . . . lesbians?” Encke asked, frowning at it.  Keeler just shrugged, blushing.  “Are you into women?”

Keeler flushed deeper, drawing his knees up to his chest.  “I don’t know, I just . . . don’t like watching with, you know, with men.”  Encke took Keeler’s hand, kissing his palm.  “They—it always looks like it hurts,” Keeler finished, curling his fingers against Encke’s cheek.  Encke didn’t laugh, kissing Keeler’s hand until some of his embarrassment eased away.

He coaxed Keeler down with little kisses to his finger tips, teasing him with kisses across his wrist and palm until Keeler let himself be curled into Encke’s bunk, naked with Keeler’s computer balanced on the bed.  Encke mostly ignored it, spooning Keeler and teasing him harder, bored with the porn but enjoying making Keeler squirm against him.  Keeler didn’t make a sound, breath just coming heavier as he tried to twist back and forth between kissing Encke over his shoulder and the screen.

Encke reached over eventually and put the computer on the floor, pulling Keeler over to straddle him, gentle when Keeler went stiff.  “Shhh, baby, shhh, not gonna do anything.  Just touching, I promise,” Encke said, stroking Keeler’s back and arms as he pulled away a little.  “I promise, baby.”

“You promised to stop calling me _baby_ ,” Keeler murmured, leaning back down to bite his ear, a little bolder now, and Encke’s cock jumped at it.

Keeler watched him fish the lube out, the green apple smell not so bad when there was no cinnamon to go with it.  Encke slicked his fingers, raising his eyebrows in question as he brought a hand behind Keeler, and Encke wanted so badly to fuck him then even if it would be better for the waiting.

He teased Keeler open with the tip of one finger, barely anything, watching Keeler’s face to tell him to stop.  Just slow little circles, Keeler rocking against him and kissing delicate little bruises along his neck and collar bone and their cocks rubbing together hot.  He let Keeler ease against him, rocking back and forward, sucking Encke’s ear as he decided how slow to take it.

“You’re not—this isn’t boring for you?” Keeler breathed, biting back a little moan.  Encke looked up at him, wishing he could twist his hand in Keeler’s sheet of pale hair and pull him down to kiss.  

“Nah, baby, I could do this all night.  You’re so fucking beautiful,” he said, stroking Keeler’s cock.  Keeler cupped Encke’s face, leaning down to bite his lip and kiss slow and silent, shuddering as he came.  He was so fucking skinny as Encke held him after, Keeler curled on his chest and breathing slow.  Skinny and breakable and perfect, all lean muscle and skinny legs as Encke stroked his hair.

* * *

Encke could feel Fifty watching Keeler, following him with his eyes through mess, tracking him even if Fifty went out of his way to avoid Encke, just like the good old days.  Everybody watched Keeler, the fighters at least, mutters and laughs not hidden quickly enough when Encke walked into a room.  He didn’t know how Keeler could stand it.

So he’d been expecting it, he just hadn’t been expecting it like this.  Twenty or thirty fighters in one of the empty hangers, some watching intently and others just bored, smoking and talking like it was a game on the screen and not something awful.

The room went quiet when he came in, dead silent except for the tiny sounds playing off someone’s tablet in the middle of it all.  Encke recognized Keeler’s voice even though he’d never heard Keeler make a sound in bed, and now he was listening to the reason why, Keeler’s breathy, strangled gasps under the awful slap of skin on skin and another voice on the video demanding _louder_.

He caught one look at it as he turned it off, Keeler from behind, someone’s hand in his hair keeping him from hiding his face in his arms, shot so that anyone who watched it could pretend they were fucking Keeler like that, see every expression he made.  Perfectly planned for it.  Keeler’s head was jerked back by the hair just as Encke turned it off, Keeler looking over his shoulder with pure hatred, straight into the camera.  Straight at Encke as he turned it off.

Encke ground his jaw, memorizing each and every face in the room.  Curled his hand around the tablet, protecting it even though he wanted to throw it across the room and pound the pieces to dust, keeping Keeler’s humiliation close to him so he could give the hateful thing to Cassius to track down everyone who’d so much as ever lain eyes on the thing.  “You four, brig for a week,” he said to the closest ones, the ones stupid enough to get caught close.  “The rest of you, hard training for a month.  If I _ever_ hear about this again, if I hear anybody even so much as whispers it _exists_ , you’re all getting time in the brig.”

And then there was Fifty and Thirty in the back, Fifty quickly hiding his shock behind his cigarette and a bored look, staring down Encke defiantly.  Of course Fifty was there to see it.

Encke stood by the one door out, waiting with his arms crossed over his chest as they all filed out, Fifty and Thirty dawdling in the back, looking for a way out of it, the little cowards.  Encke memorized each and every face, to be sure they all regretted this so long as they were under his command.

He cut Fifty away from Thirty as they tried to sidle past him, putting an arm across the door between them.  “Keep walking, Thirty,” he said quietly as the little shit hesitated, eyes on Fifty.  He watched them exchange looks, and if he wasn’t sure he wouldn’t get knifed in the back one night, he was at least sure of Cassius standing there outside the door just then, making sure it didn’t get ugly.

Fifty watched him warily just out of arm’s reach, not quite looking him in the eye.

Encke grabbed him by the jacket and swung him against the wall, more pleased that he should have been with the sound of Fifty’s head cracking against the metal and the air whooshing out of him.  “You stay the fuck away from Keeler, you hear me, Fifty?”

“Or what?  _Sir?_ ” Fifty sneered, and Encke curled his fist next to the little shit’s head, not about to have his bluff called.

“Or I’ll make sure word gets around exactly why One has you on that special little project and how you got through basic,” Encke said quietly, watching Fifty’s jaw clench.  “You so much as look at Keeler again and I’ll make sure everybody knows just what you are.”  He kept his hand next to Fifty’s head, watching him flush, waiting for him to break and give Encke an excuse to beat the shit out of him.  But Fifty wouldn’t take the bait, keeping his damn mouth shut for once in his life, glaring up at him.  “See how long you last then.”

That did it, Fifty’s fear and resentment breaking through just enough to give Encke the excuse he needed.  He shook Fifty against the wall, throwing him away, watching him stumble out into the middle of the hanger.  Fifty rounded on him, scared and ready to have the shit beaten out of him but ready to stand his ground when it happened.  

“Get out,” Encke snapped, needing to punch someone so badly.  “ _Get out_ ,” he yelled when Fifty just stood there looking at him dumb, and didn’t watch him hurry out.

He stood there glaring at his boots so long Cassius came in, standing just out of reach, reading his mood.

“Who told you about it?” Encke demanded.

A pause as Cassius checked his tablet.  “Reliant.  Said to take care of it before you found out, but I figured you’d want to deal with it yourself.”

Encke looked at him finally.  “The navigator told you?  Abel?”  If Abel knew about it, the rest of the navigators knew about it, and Keeler certainly knew about it.  Encke rubbed his eyes, worrying over how bad a state he’d find Keeler in once he got back to the room.

“Uh, no sir.  Reliant’s fighter, the troublemaker.  Said he heard about it from Bede and Laius, said not to tell you about it.”  Encke glared at Cassius, grinding his jaw.  Of course Fifty wanted to make sure it didn’t get back to him, keep the game going as long as possible so the photos of Keeler could get around longer.

He didn’t think about it until later, and wasn’t that the story of his fucking life.  Didn’t think about all the reasons Fifty had to not want him to find out about the video, not when Keeler left him alone in his bunk that night like every night, because Fifty had always been afraid of him, and Keeler always would be.


	13. Deimos

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is a Deimos POV chapter set about halfway through ch12, just before the scene where Encke walks into the hanger.

“You heard?” Deimos asked as he sat next to Cain, watching the lieutenant across the mess, flirting with the rest of the navigators.  Athos hung off Keeler, glaring daggers past him to where Abel sat blushing at the end of the table.  

Cain glared at him, their mushy excuse for a dinner, at Keeler’s back.  Jealous, maybe, always so twisted up over Eight since they’d started fucking again.  “Eight’s gonna be pissed.  His new bitch won’t look so pretty after he gets his nose broken.”

Deimos shrugged, starting his dinner.  “Eight probably already knows about it.”  Athos came back every night breathless with gushing over Keeler’s flirting at the lab; the lieutenant had probably already fucked half the navigators, busy working his way through the other half.  Deimos didn’t think Athos had gotten fucked yet, not with his breathless little crush still alive, but it could only be a matter of time.

“Wouldn’t be fucking him if he knew,” Cain snapped.  “Abel says they’re fucking, so Eight doesn’t know.  He’s got better taste than that,” Cain said bitterly, scowling down at his tray of gray mash.

Deimos watched him poke at it, looking for a way to make Cain drop it.  A little pain, a little liquor, a quick blowjob had always worked in basic, something to get Sacha’s mind off it while Aleks fucked him, making him forget all about Eight, but that didn’t work so well anymore.  “It’s not like he wanted it, if Laius is involved with it,” Deimos whispered finally.

Cain’s back stiffened.  “You don’t think I can fucking tell the difference?” he hissed.  “Seen enough of that shit to know the difference, but it never made a difference to _Eight_.  Bede and Laius’ll show everybody that fucking video, anybody that doesn’t want to watch it’ll get jumped for being pansies, and Keeler’ll get his pretty fucking face broken for being a _whore_.”

They both went silent as Encke walked by, giving them both a cold look, but mostly Cain, who glared back.  Looking for an insubordination charge if he wasn’t careful, as if Eight didn’t already have enough ways to force him on his knees.  Even if Deimos knew there wasn’t always much forcing involved.  Sacha was a whore, too needy and looking for approval even if all he got was fucked over the lieutenant’s desk, but Eight didn’t deserve him, not the way Deimos did.  Eight pretended to protect him; Deimos actually did.

Deimos brushed Cain’s thigh under the table, flashing his knife and raising and eyebrow in Eight’s direction.  Frowned when Cain shook his head.  They should have taken out Eight when they had the chance those last few weeks of basic, but Sacha had always been too soft for that even after they killed Six.

He was harder now, after what Eight had done to him, after what One had done to him, after what Deimos had done to him.  But Deimos knew that broken, soft-hearted, _weak_ sixteen-year-old Sacha was still in there, would always know where to look for the edges of that pain even if Cain hated that he knew.  Deimos was the only one who knew, no matter how many pretty, breakable, _broken_ navigators Cain went through.

He reached to catch Cain’s wrist as he stood, ready to rush into something stupid.  “Where are you going?” Deimos hissed.

Cain shot him a glare, the one that said he’d find a way to make Deimos pay for this later, to pay for knowing all the raw edges of him.  “To talk to Cassius,” Cain spat.


	14. Chapter 14

Fifty was contrite on his knees after that, beautiful and obedient and barely bothering to hide his resentment.  Encke tried to pretend to be gentle, tried to make it something like when they were on leave together, when he’d thought they both wanted it.  Fifty was better at hiding what he was thinking than he’d ever been, face shuttering closed during briefings and dropping to his knees any time they had to be alone together, never quite making eye contact anymore.  

Thirty trailed him everywhere, just like basic, and Encke tried not to think about how that had ended for Six.  Had more time to think about it than he ever wanted one night after fucking Fifty at the office, walking out and leaving Fifty there alone like most nights, when he ran into Thirty in the corridor outside central.  

Didn’t run into him—he’d have been dead if he had—instead he had the whole length of the empty half-lit corridor to watch Thirty slowly get closer, trying to decide if it was worth it to chew Thirty out for being in central past crew curfew.  Decided that slowly bleeding to death alone in the half dark wasn’t worth it, and let Thirty pass him by on the way to meet Fifty, and went home to Keeler, safe and shy and predictable, all tentative kisses and none of Fifty’s snarling energy.

* * *

It was a routine, and if it wasn’t the one he wanted, it was at least better than the jagged breaks in his routine.  And if only it were so easy to solve as breaking heads.

Puck marched into his office one morning, sucking his lip ring and looking about ready to burst a blood vessel.  He shoved a tablet in Encke’s face with no prelude.  “Sign this.”  Cassius stood in the doorway, face blank and having made no move to stop Puck.

“The fuck got into you?” Encke asked, peering around the little shit to glare at Cassius.  Not much use having an office or a sergeant if Puck just marched the fuck in whenever he felt like it.

Puck pursed his lips, pushing his lip piercing out into the cold light.  “Keeler is _not_ happy.  You’ve let this sit all morning, now sign it.”

“Can I at least fucking read it before I sign it?”

“One of your fighters raped his navigator,” Puck snapped.  “Read it and sign it so he can get his transfer.”

Encke glanced from Puck to Cassius, both of them waiting in disapproving silence while he read over the preliminary report.  Given to Keeler that morning, while Encke was doing briefings and supervising simulations, and Encke could only imagine how that went down if he had Puck breathing down his neck about it three hours later.  Puck snatched it out of his hands as soon as he’d pressed his thumbprint to it.

Encke frowned after him, and at Cassius when Puck was gone back to Keeler’s side of central.  “You gossip with him, what the fuck does he have his panties in a twist over?”

Cassius just shrugged, glancing at the dented side of the desk, mouth pressed thin.  Left without a word, following Puck out.

Encke sighed and put his head in his hands.  Cassius knew about Fifty, even if he’d never say anything, and if Cassius knew, then Puck knew, and if Puck knew then Keeler almost certainly knew.  Puck and Cassius might try to keep it to themselves to spare Keeler’s feelings, but not if they thought Encke was going to fuck Keeler over worse than he already had been.

* * *

Cook peered at them over his glasses two hours later, eyes on Keeler, ignoring Encke.  

He was only there as a formality anyway, Bering too busy to deal with it and some nod needing to be made to an equal representation from both sides.  Keeler for the victim, Encke for the accused rapist.  How he was supposed to in good faith represent a fighter he’d rather just kill, he didn’t know, not with Keeler barely covering his shaking where they stood shoulder to shoulder in front of Cook’s desk.

“So what would you like me to do about it, lieutenant?” Cook said finally, after Keeler outlined the navigator’s story and Encke outlined the fighter’s record.  Good scores, clean disciplinary record, better than Encke’s.  Out of basic at the top of his squad, and everyone in the room knew what that meant even if no one said it.  “I can’t transfer every navigator who comes up with some story when he regrets sleeping with his fighter.”

Keeler took a breath and let it out slowly, speaking carefully.  “Sir, with all due respect, that’s not what he—“

Cook waved a hand.  “And I’m sure his fighter would tell it different.  We’re not getting involved in a lovers’ quarrel when the boy may just as easily change his mind next week.  I would think you of all people would appreciate how rumors fly and stories change, lieutenant.”  Keeler inhaled sharply, his jaw tight.  “We don’t have time for this.  I’d like a report on the engine by the end of the week, if you can contain the hysterics enough to get it done.”  Cook waved them out finally, his dead-eyed assistant watching Keeler too closely as they left.

Encke followed him out, one step behind, watching the way Keeler steadied himself with fingertips against the wall of the corridor.  Said nothing when Keeler flicked Encke’s hand away as they stepped into the elevator.

“You okay?” Encke asked as the numbers ticked up.

Keeler didn’t look at him, just frowned at the floor where he stood balancing himself discreetly against the wall with his fingertips.  “I’m _fine_ , I’m not made of glass.”

“You don’t look fine, you gonna faint again—?“

Keeler glared at him.  “I’m _fine_.”  He took a deep breath, steadying himself.  “This isn’t the first time I’ve dealt with this, I know they don’t care.  But it’s not a lover’s quarrel, we can’t leave him there.”

“I know, baby.”  Keeler glared at him again, jaw tight and his whole body tense.  “Keeler—Hector—I’m sorry.  We’ll figure something out, we won’t just leave him there,” Encke said.  Keeler bit his lip, glancing down and back up at Encke, looking for something.  Encke pulled him to his chest, squeezing him tight as the lift slowed.  “We’ll figure something out, it’ll be okay,” he said, even though he had no idea how.

* * *

There wasn’t a solution for it, not a legal solution, not a solution Encke wanted to think about for too long or admit he’d had a part of.  Couldn’t transfer a new navigator in, not when they knew the fighter was a predator, couldn’t leave the first navigator there.  Couldn’t spare the numbers to break up a team when they were headed straight into enemy territory.  Couldn’t do nothing, with every night the navigator was left there one more night for Keeler to shiver alone in the top bunk, sipping his scotch and worrying himself to exhaustion.

So Cassius quietly arranged for the fighter to take a _bad fall_ during training, a fall that left him nearly blind in one eye and unfit for active duty while medical monitored his bruised kidneys and mangled hands, and Puck just as quietly arranged for the navigator to be transferred, and none of them said anything about it to Keeler.  The best any of them could say was that they didn’t know for certain that the new fighter would be a rapist, which was the best anyone could have said for the first one too.

* * *

He took it out on Fifty, who was the last person he should have taken it out on, but every goddamn time Fifty opened his mouth in training or watched Keeler across the mess when he thought Encke wasn’t watching, he found himself needing to fuck someone rough, someone who wouldn’t flinch away every time he moved too quickly, someone who he knew exactly how to make come hard and not worry about how he felt after.

Encke didn’t have to worry about moving slow with Fifty, didn’t have to worry about checking every three seconds if he wanted to stop, didn’t have to worry about Fifty deciding they were done and walking away.  And when he thought about why he could have that with Fifty and not Keeler, he couldn’t make himself look in the mirror every morning, so he stopped trying.

It was easier to not think about why it was easy, when he went back to the office late and leaned back in his rickety chair, too exhausted to fuck Fifty over the desk.  He held Fifty back against his chest, sucking dark bruises on the warm skin behind his ear and stroking his cock.  

Fifty twisted against him, all lean muscle trying to be fucked faster and harder and rougher, skinny legs trying to balance on Encke’s lap as he fucked him slow and deliberate.  Encke caught his lip and bit as they kissed, throbbing harder every time Fifty moaned and arched back against him, trying to make Encke jerk him faster.  But he just thumbed the tip of Fifty’s cock, hot and heavy and insistent, teasing Fifty and making him come with a little shudder and snarl.

He came with Fifty bent backwards against him, biting his ear and gasping for it needy like when it had been good between them, and he’d have held Fifty there against him forever if he could have.

Fifty shoved himself out of Encke’s grasp before either of them were really done, pulling his clothes back on as he hurried for the door.

“The fuck is wrong with you this time?” Encke demanded, too tired for this shit.

“I’m not your _bitch_ , Eight, so don’t ever fucking call me by his name,” Cain snapped over his shoulder, leaving Encke there to rub his eyes and wonder what the fuck he was doing.

* * *

Keeler looked up at him from the middle of the floor when he got back to the room, sitting in the middle of a nest he’d made of their mattresses, pulled off the walls and the bunks snapped away.  Cheeks flushed pink, looking as pleased with himself as Encke had ever seen him.

Sweet and shy and unpredictable, more trusting than Encke had ever expected or ever deserved from him.

Encke swallowed hard and eased himself down next to Keeler, wanting to let Keeler lean in to kiss him, wanting to be everything Keeler wanted and needed, but he wasn’t, he was just some asshole fucking his navigator and anybody else who’d let him on the side.

Should have said it weeks ago.  Should never have done it in the first place.  “I fucked someone else,” he said.

“I know,” Keeler said, and shrugged when Encke gave him a shocked look.  “It’s a small ship, word gets around.  The office wasn’t very subtle, and I hear about most things, eventually.”  Keeler shrugged again, and Encke knew he meant the video.

 _I’ve heard it’s very good_.

Of course Keeler had heard about it, had probably heard that Encke had seen it.

“Who is he?” Keeler asked, changing the subject.

“Just a . . .” Encke sighed.  Rubbed his eyes, since there was no explaining Fifty to Keeler.  “Just somebody I knew in basic, came in with the new squads.  Nobody important.”

Keeler put a thin hand in Encke’s, drawing circles on his palm with the tip of one finger.  “I don’t mind if you want to keep seeing him,” Keeler said after a while.  “Someone I knew in training came in with the new squads too, I just didn’t know how to bring it up.  I’d hate for . . . I’d hate for something to happen, and have us regret not being with people we cared about.”

“Baby, it’s not like that,” Encke sighed, not sure where to even start.

“It’s fine, really,” Keeler said, brushing his lips across Encke’s cheek quick and retreating, embarrassed.  “My, um, my friend is fine with it, if yours is.  If you are,” he added, flushed pink and head bowed.  “I know I’m not—I’m not really what you wanted.”

Encke took a sharp breath, wishing he’d thought about Keeler in any of this, about how it’d look after everything else. “That’s not why, there’s nothing wrong with you—“

“Then why?” Keeler cut him off, quiet and sharp, a thousand times worse than having the sergeant scream at him in basic.

“It’s—complicated.  It’s not because of you, you’re perfect.”  Encke sighed and rubbed his face again.  “You’re perfect,” he said, and meant it.  “It’s just—we go a long way back, is all, it’s hard to explain.”

They sat in silence for a minute, Keeler drawing circles on Encke’s palm and thinking.  “I’d like to make this work,” Keeler said quietly.  “I’d like to make us work, after everything, if you do.  I want there to be an us.  But if something happens, I don’t want to regret anything.”

Let Keeler fuck who he wanted and Encke on the side, like Encke had been doing the whole time.  Like all the waiting and patience and teasing hadn’t meant a goddamn thing, like Encke hadn’t been the one to pull Kratos off him, to show him sex could be good, that not everybody was a pushy asshole.

He took a deep breath and blew it out, because that was pushy asshole talk, the kind of thing Six sneered about in basic, the kind of thing assholes like Bede sneered about belowdecks.  Keeler could fuck who he wanted anyway, Encke already had, and if he wanted to be one of the ones Keeler wanted to fuck, he couldn’t be a pushy asshole about it.

Even if he hated the thought of it.

So he pulled Keeler to him, arm around his shoulder, and decided he’d take whatever Keeler wanted to give.  Let Keeler push him down and strip him naked, let Keeler straddle him and get the condoms, let Keeler give him a shy smile and ease himself down, whispering about practice.

He was so fucking gorgeous, skinny and perfect and strong, and Encke could have lay on his back and watched him forever, Keeler breathing slowly and smiling down at him, fucking beatific.  Not a hint of pain on his face as he rocked slowly over Encke, stopping to lean down and kiss warm and easy.

Keeler tugged them over to lie on their sides, not a sound out of him except his fast breathing and a soft whisper to rearrange them, to keep Encke from flipping him on his back and covering him, and Encke wished he didn’t understand why without having to ask.  So they lay with one of Keeler’s legs crushed under Encke’s side and Keeler’s other knee drawn up to his chest, uncomfortable but close, nose to nose and near enough for Encke to watch Keeler’s pale eyelashes on his cheek.

He rocked into Keeler, sucking bruises over his collarbone, in the hollow of his neck, wanting to pick Keeler up and do this standing, fast and slick and a little rough, but then he’d miss Keeler’s hands on him, one arm thrown over Encke’s shoulder and the other digging into his thigh.  

Keeler brought his knee up tighter to his chest and braced himself with the leg crushed under Encke’s side, tilting his ass up and trying to be fucked faster, head thrown back so Encke could watch his mouth open with breathy gasps.  He growled into Keeler’s neck, hands on his skinny ass, trying to bring them both off with Keeler’s cock rubbing hot between them and Keeler’s blunt fingers dragging up his thigh, making him shudder.  Keeler pulled Encke into him, trailing fingers over his ass, teasing with the pads of his fingers, delicate and roaming.

Encke yanked Keeler’s hand away, pinning his wrist to the mattress before he thought about it and Keeler froze, tense and terrified.  They both took ragged breaths, Keeler staring at him with big eyes and turning his face away, trying to hunch his shoulders and protect himself but trapped by Encke’s weight.

He took a deep breath, letting it go, letting Keeler’s wrist go.  Keeler was nothing like Fifty, he didn’t have to keep Keeler in line, when it was something they’d already done, when here he was being a hypocrite and fucking Keeler.  “I’m sorry, baby, so sorry,” he whispered into Keeler’s neck, letting his hand go.  “Didn’t mean to scare you, I’m so sorry.”

Keeler took slow breaths, watching him, waiting for something.  “I’m not afraid of you,” he said finally, cupping Encke’s face, and he wanted so badly to pretend they both didn’t know that was a lie, a comfortable sweet lie Keeler told to spare his feelings.

He rocked into Keeler slower, trying to make it sweet, hoping it wasn’t a lie later when Keeler curled against him and whispered how good it was, how much it meant.

And even later, when Keeler murmured the last thing Encke had ever been expecting to hear from him, he hoped and prayed that Keeler knew it was a lie even as he said it, that Keeler knew just as well as he did that there wasn’t any love between them.


	15. Deimos

Deimos stood in the door of Eight’s office, waiting for Sacha to notice him.  He sat on the floor with his back against the desk, boot in his hand and just staring at it.  Deimos waited, like that night in basic, watching Sacha take one deep breath and another, finally yanking his boots on as he pulled back from whatever he was thinking about.  Cain stood up, squaring his shoulders and walking past Deimos without a word.

They walked together in the half dark, back the way Eight had run home to his pretty new navigator, and Deimos thought about suggesting again that they go take care of him.  He’d thought about just ending it when he first ran into Eight alone in the corridor, without Cain’s knowledge, but if he was reasonably sure of getting away with it, he was also reasonably sure Sacha would never forgive him for it, even after everything Eight had done to him.  Deimos would have cut that part out of Cain if he could have, that part that was still Sacha, but Cain hung on tight to it like it was precious, all that pain and brokenness.  And if Deimos hung onto it too, it was for different reasons, and it didn't make him weak like it did Cain.

They walked together in silence, Cain breaking stride only when they got to the room and his step faltered, just a hesitation no one but Deimos would notice.  Sacha hid in plain sight, behind all of Cain’s brash combativeness, and only Deimos knew him well enough to catch when it happened.

“How was training?” Abel asked sleepily as the door closed behind them, half rolling over to watch Cain shrug out of his jacket.  “Wish they didn’t keep you so late every night.”

Cain didn’t answer, just kicked his boots off and crawled up the bed to cover Abel, Deimos left to watch them, hard already.  He kicked off his own boots and threw his jacket with Cain’s, crawling after him, one step behind him in everything.

Abel hummed sleepily between them, naked, soft, and greedy as he reached for both of them.  He was so beautiful and pristine, and Deimos knew exactly why Cain buried his face in Abel’s neck, Abel twisting to kiss them both but focused on Cain.  Abel was perfect, strong and skinny and unbreakable, brave and everything that Sacha used to think he wanted to be, until he’d learned better from Eight, and One, and Deimos.

They’d started fucking weeks ago, after Eight started fucking Cain again, because if Sacha got off on being used and pushed around by Eight, he just as badly needed to use and push around someone else, and trying to push the navigator into something he couldn’t want should have worked.  And Deimos was just as pleasantly surprised when the navigator did want it, didn’t have to be coaxed or intimidated into it like the others had been, just begged for more and twisted between them open and beautiful and naive, as if anything like this could be love.

Even if this Abel was stronger than the previous ones, even if Deimos liked this one better, he and Cain both knew this one would break eventually, just like all the other ones, even if the navigator didn’t know it yet.  Cain would break this Abel just like all the other ones, and this Abel would disappear just like all the other ones.  

And when he did, Cain would only have Deimos to lean on, just like after every other navigator, just like in basic, because only Deimos knew all the jagged broken parts of him.  The parts a soft, sheltered, earth-born navigator would never understand, the parts he would pity, with barely concealed contempt, before he used it as an excuse to find someone better, someone undamaged.  Even if Cain ever let Abel see that part of him, Abel would never understand it like Deimos did, would never cherish it like Deimos did, because on earth they could throw away all their broken, useless things, instead of being forced by the colonies to find a use for them and make them beautiful.

He watched it happen, just like all the other times, and if it was slower this time it was only because Cain knew it was happening and Sacha didn’t want it to happen again, all Cain’s little cruelties adding up with Sacha’s needy fragility, the navigator lost suffocating under it all.  When Abel gave Deimos hurt, anxious glances _why_ , Deimos said nothing, because all of Sacha’s pain and desperation was what made Cain belong to Deimos, and Deimos was never going to share that, not with a navigator, not even with this one. It wasn't selfish, it was protecting Sacha from being hurt by anyone else.

So he just watched Cain do it, pushing Abel away with all the subtle callousness he’d learned from Eight, the bullying and the cruel endearments, the sneered dismissals, the public humiliations and the private pain wrapped in false kindnesses.  And if none of it was as overt as what Eight had done to him, it was only because Sacha wanted so badly to keep this navigator, but that didn’t make it stop, only made it slower.

When it finally happened, Deimos knew it before Cain did, maybe even knew it before Abel did.  He knew as soon as Athos stopped hanging off Keeler in mess, when Athos stopped spending his nights with Porthos, because Keeler had never been and never would be interested in someone like Athos, no matter how hard Athos tried.  Athos wasn’t Keeler’s type, any more than Athos was Deimos’ type, and as soon as Deimos realized that, he realized exactly who was.


	16. Chapter 16

Encke twisted himself in knots trying to figure out who else was fucking Keeler, spending his nights with Keeler draped over him, telling himself it didn’t matter who else it was because Keeler came home every night to _him_ , but spent his days glaring murder at Thirty’s navigator hanging off Keeler at meals anyway.

He didn’t know for sure that they were fucking, but it sure looked like it, Puck sitting next to Keeler rolling his eyes at Athos, Athos glaring daggers at Puck and any of the other navigators stupid enough to get close, Fifty and Thirty watching across the mess like a pair of carrion crows.  Encke wanted and didn’t want to know for certain, needing to know if Keeler was fucking Thirty’s navigator so he could chase the navigator off and keep Keeler from getting knifed in a dark corridor, not wanting to know because if he didn’t, then he could pretend it was just him who made Keeler forget his perfect cold front, who made Keeler arch his back and come with a little whimpered moan, louder every time.

Even if he knew he wasn’t the only one, Keeler’s toes icy cold most nights Encke fell into bed beside him, but warm a few nights a week, after Keeler had been with his _friend_ while Encke was fucking Fifty, and Encke had to keep himself from thinking where else Keeler’s mouth had been when Keeler traced warm hands over his chest at night, kissing away his bruises and scrapes from Fifty and from training.  So instead he concentrated on trying to make Keeler forget all about whoever else it was, ignoring the awful cinnamon taste of the condoms and trying to ignore Keeler’s whispered endearments after.  As badly as he wanted to believe everything Keeler murmured against his chest, he couldn’t listen and not wonder who else Keeler had said it to, and which of them Keeler really meant it for.

And when Encke finally saw him walking away from their room one night, he had to go yank Cassius out of bed to run laps to keep himself from punching the navigator or shaking Keeler.

If Keeler was Encke’s type, skinny and broken and in need of protecting, then Encke was sure Keeler’s type, big and dumb and strung along by his dick.  Right down to the fucking mohawk, and if Encke had any relief that Thirty and his navigator stayed the fuck away from Keeler after Porthos started hanging around, it wasn’t much better glaring down his own lookalike sneaking out of his room twice a week.

Broad chested and quiet, Porthos was the safer version of Encke, the navigator version, the version of him Keeler could think about taking home to his parents, the version who would know about thirty year single malt and not read embarrassingly old novels for lack of money to buy anything new.  

And, from the way Keeler smiled at Porthos across the table during mess and the tension he’d finally lost when he let Encke fuck him, Porthos was the version Keeler deserved, the version that didn’t scare him with the risk of being held down and forced first thing in the morning.  Because even if Keeler came back to Encke every night, even if Keeler had been the one to put the mattresses together, Keeler still shied away when Encke reached to kiss him in the morning, curling away and sometimes tucking a pillow between them when he thought Encke was asleep and wouldn’t notice.  

Encke just wanted to shake him and demand to know why Keeler bothered with any of it, if he hated sleeping together so much, but Encke was too much of a coward to hear the answer, afraid he already knew.

* * *

But Porthos didn’t wake up next to Keeler every morning, didn’t get to sit there stupid when Keeler handed him a hairbrush and turned his back.

“Can you braid it?” Keeler asked, bed rumpled and beautiful and finally letting himself be touched after everything else they’d done.  “My back still hurts from rewiring, if you know how to do it.”

Encke stared, brush in hand.  “Yeah, uh, just one braid?” he asked before he thought better of it, because of course it would only be one braid.  He’d never been very good at doing the little girls’ cornrows, but he could do braided pigtails just fine, not that Keeler needed pigtails.  Keeler just gave him a smile over one shoulder and leaned back for a kiss.

“You’d look cute with it cut short, or a little mohawk too, baby,” Encke said, brushing his lips across the back of Keeler’s neck as he leaned in to gather up his hair.  Encke dragged the brush through it, careful of the little tangles to make sure he’d be asked to do this again.  If Keeler cut it short, he wouldn’t have to think about it during sex, Encke wouldn’t have to think about being careful of it.  Even if it meant never sitting here again with his fingers twisted in Keeler’s warm hair, selfish either way.

But of course that wasn’t how it worked, and he knew that as soon as Keeler glanced over his shoulder.  “If I cut it off, then he wins.  I’m not going to let him change my whole life,” Keeler said quietly.  He gave Encke another half smile, a sad one this time.  “I thought you liked it long anyway,” Keeler said, and even though Encke had never said it, his heart twisted with how easily Keeler had read him, worried about what else Keeler might have heard him thinking that he’d never said.

* * *

Encke never asked if Porthos was the friend from training, just assumed he was until he saw Keeler across the flight deck one afternoon, being talked up by a fighter Encke didn’t recognize.  Keeler let him stand too close, allowing himself to be backed against the wall as Encke slowly made his way closer, suspicious.  He knew he shouldn’t have been so fucking jealous, but he didn’t like it, didn’t like the thought of another fighter with his hands on Keeler.  Navigators were different, even if he didn’t like Porthos.

He watched them, making his way close enough to hear, watching the way Keeler kept his eyes on the fighters’ face, oblivious to everything else, hating himself for being this jealous, but things were different with fighters.  Bede threw him a smirk from where the asshole worked on his own ship, watching the show.

The fighter put a hand next to Keeler’s head, boxing him in, leaning towards him.  Tall, broad and a strong jaw, a meaner looking version of Porthos, just Keeler’s type.  “It’s been too long, baby.  Did you miss me?”

Keeler turned his face away, looking bored.

“What’s the matter, sweetheart, don’t you got a kiss for me for old times’ sake?”  Encke watched as Keeler took a breath, almost felt it when Keeler brushed a dry, cool kiss across the fighter’s cheek like he did Encke’s every night.  “See you later, baby,” the fighter said, stroking Keeler’s hair, and Encke tried to catch his eye as Keeler swept away.  But Keeler hurried out, ignoring him, ignoring everyone but Puck, who he caught at the door of the hanger and pulled away with him.

Encke ground his jaw as the new fighter turned to Bede, and he realized exactly who the bastard was, but he asked anyway.  He stalked up to them, ignoring Bede’s not-quite-sneered _lieutenant_.

“Take a walk,” Encke said, not bothering to look at Bede as the bastard sauntered off, eyes on the fighter who’d been leaning over Keeler.  “Who the fuck are you?”

“Laius.  Keeler’s first Encke,” Laius said with a smile, reaching his hand out to shake.  “Taught him everything he knows.  You’re welcome, brother.”

Encke barely realized it until the MPs and Cassius pulled him off, blood from Laius’ broken face dripping off Encke’s hands and shocked navigators shouting and huddling back.  Barely listened while Bering ripped him a new asshole for abusing his position, barely cared when Cassius read him off the list of charges the MPs wanted pressed but Bering blocked for fuck knew what reason.  

 _You’d be more fucking use if you didn’t go chasing every skinny piece of ass that needed rescuing_.  _Thought you learned that in basic, but it looks like you’re no more use now than you were then._ Encke didn’t want to be _of use_ , he wanted to fucking kill Laius for ever putting his hands on Keeler.

Someone knew, someone in central knew what Laius was and tried to put a mark on him without putting it in his file, Laius in mythology Oedipus’ father, cursed for kidnapping and raping a prince.  Keeler probably hadn’t been the first or the last, but with no evidence of a pattern because command would never take a report, it was Encke getting a new one ripped for assault and conduct unbecoming an officer and not a fucking other thing he could do about it.

* * *

Keeler stood as Encke closed the door that night, knowing he should be sore but feeling nothing.  “What happened to you?” Keeler demanded.  “Cassius said you were in a fight—“

Encke’s breath came ragged, his heart starting to pound again with Keeler right in front of him again.  “I’m gonna fucking kill Laius, make sure he pisses through a tube for the rest of his fucking life—“

“Leave it,” Keeler said quietly, turning away, shuttering closed.  “I put him on blue squad.”

Encke stopped and stared, Keeler’s voice hard past the quiet softness of it.  That was completely different from arranging a bad fall, might as well have shot Laius in the head as put him on blue squad, and at least when Cassius had arranged the other bad fall, the navigator hadn’t been killed by it too.  “That’s—that’s fucking cold, don’t you give a fuck about his navigator—“

Keeler turned on him, face cold and furious, and Encke took a shaken step back.  “Of _course_ I care, but what else do you want me to do?”  Keeler raked his hands through his hair.  “What do you think it’ll look like if fighters who get accused of rape keep turning up to medical with conveniently bad _accidents_ from training?  Do you want to lose your promotion and spend the rest of your enlistment is prison, and Cassius with you?” Keeler demanded.  _I hear about most things eventually_.  Encke breathed slowly, knowing Keeler was right and hating it.

“They’ll come back if they’re meant to,” Keeler said eventually, sounding sick with it.  Even though they both knew blue squad wouldn’t be coming back, not from this.  Keeler took a deep breath and gave him a level look, gone cold as Fifty that last week of basic, after he’d killed Six.  Encke swallowed hard, wishing Keeler didn’t look so much like Fifty, or Fifty so much like Keeler, both of them beautiful and scared and cold.  Wished even harder that they looked nothing alike when Keeler stumbled into him, hiding his face in Encke’s shoulder and needing to be held.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once more I'm [stealing a scene from J8 with the hairbrushing.](http://justeight.tumblr.com/post/33818080433/not-sure-if-sorry-or-not-dont-fuck-up-encke)


	17. Chapter 17

After that, Encke put a security track on Laius and Porthos both, getting an alert on his tablet any time either one so much as opened a door.  Keeler would know and never stand for it if Encke just put a track on _Keeler_ , but that didn’t stop Encke from thinking about it, paranoid and on edge with how close Laius had gotten to him, boxing Keeler in, in front of everybody, and he couldn’t stomach the thought of Keeler being cornered into something else.  

And if he knew now exactly what Laius was and couldn’t do a fucking thing about it, he had no fucking clue about Porthos, twisting himself in knots worse now that he knew who else was fucking Keeler, worrying about how and whether Keeler wanted it, or whether Keeler did want Porthos and and just kept fucking Encke because—

He didn’t want to think about why.

He tracked down Porthos after mess a few days later, determined to not be such a fucking coward about it and finally face it, even if he couldn’t face Keeler about it just yet.  Porthos stood almost nose to nose with him, too tall for a navigator, too broad, built like a fighter and Encke bullied him like one, backing him against a wall after cutting him away from the rest of the navigators, only recognizing him in that sea of blank repetitive blondness for the stupid fucking mohawk.

“How long you been fucking him?” Encke demanded.  “Since academy?”

Porthos looked him up and down, unimpressed, unintimidated, and Encke scowled.  Navigators were supposed to be easy, easy to bully, easy to get into bed, easier to order around, and the more of them Encke had to deal with the more he found that was all a fucking lie, they were none of them easy about anything, complicated and baffling.

“Keeler?” Porthos asked finally, after Encke just stood there staring him down in silence.  “What’s it to you?”

“Because I fucking asked, that’s why,” Encke said slowly, resisting the urge to shake the pompous shit against the wall with navigators filtering past them, already giving them looks.

They stared each other down, Encke not about to give anything.  “Are you sleeping together?” Porthos asked, less acid this time, and Encke wasn’t sure how to take that.

“The fuck do you think?”

Porthos just shrugged, crossing his arms over his chest, and if he’d been a fighter, Encke would have snapped at him to stand to attention and show some fucking respect, but he wasn’t, so Encke couldn’t.  “Keeler’s a top, I thought he was fucking me because you weren’t interested.”

Encke barely kept himself from startling back at that.  “You—you’re— _Keeler’s_ fucking _you_?”  Porthos finally flushed, shrugging.  “Doesn’t it hurt?” he asked before he thought better of it.

Porthos swallowed a laugh, embarrassed and shocked.  “Nah, it’s—haven’t you fucked anybody?  It doesn’t hurt, just—“ Porthos cut himself off, giving Encke a look when he just kept staring.  “Wait, are you—do you want Keeler to fuck you?” he asked, and it was Encke’s turn to flush.

“Not so fucking loud,” Encke hissed, dragging Porthos away, down a quieter side corridor.  “What do you—how—why doesn’t it hurt?” he fumbled out finally, glancing behind them to see if anyone had overheard.  Encke should have shaken this out of someone else, Cassius or Puck, but Cassius he was fairly sure only fucked women and Puck would have been too chipper about it, probably explaining it with a banana.

“I don’t know, maybe it hurts the first couple times, but you just got to—“ Porthos glanced around, looking for anyone to overhear.  “Look, just, if it hurts, you didn’t do enough prep beforehand.  You gotta relax, maybe have a drink first and take it slow, do it by yourself a couple times before you try it with Keeler.”

Encke gave him a doubtful look.  Keeler didn’t seem to mind it anymore, if they went slow, and none of his other fucks had ever said anything about it.  But Fifty had always gotten off on pain and Encke wasn’t sure what to trust anymore, worried Keeler thought he was just like all his other Enckes, going along with it because he was afraid to say no, paper dry kisses across the cheek because he had to.  “And it doesn’t hurt.”

“No, man, it—it’s really good.  Like, _really_ good, just take it slow if you want to do it.  I, um—“ Porthos cleared his throat, glancing around again, maybe for witnesses in case Encke decided to murder him, which he was pretty close to.  “I, um, showed Keeler a couple things, to uh, you know, make it go better, if you ask him about it.”  Encke frowned, torn between wanting to demand what _things_ meant, and not wanting to know at all what Keeler and Porthos had done together.

“Get the fuck back to work,” Encke said finally, scowling.  “Keeler’s probably expecting you at the lab by now.”

Porthos hesitated for just a second, putting a hand on Encke’s arm as he started to turn away.  Held out his hand and just waited until Encke shook, deciding Porthos wasn’t so bad after all.

* * *

Keeler’s back stiffened when Encke tried asking about it that night, unsure how to bring it up.  Probably could have started out with something better than _Talked to Porthos_ , but there wasn’t much better way to do it.

 _The other guy you’re fucking says we’re doing it wrong_.

Maybe that would have been better.

“Why were you checking up on me?” Keeler asked quietly, his voice when he hadn’t decided yet whether to be angry.

Encke propped himself up on one elbow, wanting to put a hand on Keeler’s thigh where he sat just within reach, but knowing how well that would go over.  “I was worried about you, after—“

“I’m not your problem, Encke.  Don’t do it again.  If this is going to work, you have to trust me.”

“ _I_ have to trust _you_?  How about _you_ —“

“How about I _what_ , _Encke_?” Keeler asked quietly, dead cold.  “ _Trust_ you?”

Encke sat there gape mouthed, trying to find a way to answer that, a reason Keeler had to trust him.  Of course they had to trust each other, if they worked together, if they flew together, but trust was different than what Keeler was demanding, no questions about where he went or who with, no demands—

“I—“ Encke started, and Keeler looked at him hard, thinking over the transfer, throwing him back to be torn apart by Bede, and Laius, and Fifty and Thirty.  “I just asked Porthos how—what you wanted.”

“You did _what_?” Keeler asked, his frown softening.  Or maybe that was just wishful thinking.

Encke flushed, feeling his ears go hot.  “I—um.  It—uh—it hurt the last time we—you know—“

“Fucked?” Keeler offered, and Encke blushed harder knowing that Keeler was doing his best not to just laugh in Encke’s face.

“So I asked what I was doing wrong.  I just—I’ve never not been good at something,” Encke said.  Not fucking, not his job, not anything, until Keeler came along and made him feel like he’d never been good at anything at all and left him unsure how to do any better because he’d never had to try before.  “Thought you liked things better with him.  Thought it would make things better with us.”

“And?” Keeler asked, actually laughing, trying to push it down.

“He said to ask you,” Encke mumbled, wishing he’d just started with that and pouting under Keeler’s laugh.

Keeler pushed him over to lie on his back then, crawling closer and peering down at him.  “Don’t you have friends you could ask about that, instead of Porthos?” Keeler asked, and he didn’t sound quite so angry as he could have, more pitying.  And Encke didn’t know how to explain that of course he didn’t, because fighters didn’t get fucked, and when they did it was supposed to hurt, and they weren’t supposed to care if anyone they fucked liked it or not anyway.

So Encke just shook his head against the mattress, surprised when Keeler leaned down to kiss him slow.  Figured that was about as much forgiveness he was going to get or deserve for being a jealous asshole anyway, going hard as Keeler’s fingers wandered down his chest and belly.

“I’m still not happy about it,” Keeler said quietly, pressing a kiss below Encke’s ear.  “Don’t do it again.”

He nodded, not sure enough to trust his voice with Keeler tugging his shirt off him and shoving him back against the mattress again.  Keeler was so fucking gorgeous, stronger than he looked, and Encke watched him undress slowly, all that pale skin unveiled until Keeler straddled him naked, hard and beautiful as he leaned down for another kiss.

Encke had still never gotten to peel Keeler out of his flight suit, even if he thought about it some days in the shower, unzipping that hard outer shell and pushing his hands inside, pulling the real Keeler out and seeing all of him, maybe putting purple bites on that light skin somewhere no one else would ever see them and finally make Keeler _his_.  But of course the best he could hope for was letting Keeler nip soft bites to his neck and ear, lying there with his hands on Keeler’s bony ass and Keeler’s cold toes tucked under Encke’s legs.

“So do you want to—you know?” Encke asked, trying not to be a coward about it.

Keeler just pulled back and gave him a long, thoughtful look, half hidden by the hair coming loose from his braid.  “Do you?”

He managed to nod, liking this bolder Keeler, this Keeler who knew what he wanted and wasn’t afraid to push back a little, and if he was being honest, the sex had been best, Encke had come hardest when Keeler took the lead and Encke was just sort of there, shocked by how beautiful and strong Keeler was.

Keeler kissed him and eased Encke’s boxers off him finally, kissing his hip and thighs delicately before nudging him over and getting the lube.

Encke lay on his belly, Keeler draped naked across him and warm, kissing lazily.  It wasn’t so bad without the pressure and nervousness of actually fucking, he could halfway see what someone would like about it with Keeler’s fingers sliding slowly and his hard cock pressed to the mattress. It didn’t hurt, at least, it just wasn’t very interesting, not like fucking someone, not like being in control and watching Keeler or Fifty get off on being fucked.

Even if it made him harder to open his eyes a little and watch Keeler kiss his shoulder, curled against him and cock pressed warm to the side of Encke’s thigh.  Even if he was fascinated with listening to Keeler hum absently, eyes closed and propped up to kiss Encke’s back, the most sound he’d ever made in bed except to ask for something.  Even if—

“ _Fuck_ ,” Encke hissed, the tip of his cock throbbing white hot as Keeler brushed something and then startled back with a sharp little intake of breath.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—” Keeler breathed, pushing himself away as fast as he could, drawing his knees up between them and trying to get away.

“Baby—Keeler, come back, it’s okay,” Encke said, reaching out slow for him, staying on his belly to not startle Keeler any worse.  “That wasn’t bad, it was just really fucking good, come back.”

“I didn’t hurt you?” Keeler asked, and under that, _you’re not going to hurt me?_  

“No, baby, come back and do it again,” Encke said, wondering if Keeler would stop mixing him up with his other Enckes, wondering if he’d ever done anything to give Keeler a reason to.

Keeler blushed and eased himself back over, smiling shyly as Encke rolled onto his back and swung an arm around him to pull them together.  “I don’t remember what I did,” Keeler whispered against his neck as they rearranged themselves with one of Encke’s knees pulled up and Keeler pressed against him.

“Then we’ll just have to keep practicing,” Encke said, catching Keeler’s mouth for a kiss and gratified by his little laugh as Keeler curled fingers back into him.  It was better then, so much fucking better, with Keeler’s fingers moving slowly in him and Encke stroking himself lazily, Keeler’s warm skinny body pressed against him and hair draped down his face.  His toes curled against the mattress, breath coming ragged as Keeler held his fingers in place and kneaded, kissing him through it.

“Do you want a condom?” Keeler asked, propping himself up next to Encke.

He nodded, and felt like an asshole as soon as Keeler opened it and started rolling it on his own cock, because he’d been mostly expecting Keeler to blow him.  But it couldn’t be so bad as last time, and Encke pushed down his nerves as Keeler nudged him to roll over to his side.  Wouldn’t have been so bad at all if he could have kept staring at Keeler’s excited little smile, biting his lower lip and pink-cheeked, but it wasn’t so bad when Keeler snuggled against his back, mouth warm on the back of his neck and reaching an arm around Encke’s waist to pull him closer.

Keeler must have felt the tension in him from nerves, curling against him tighter and stroking his thighs and back, kissing his shoulder slowly and tracing little circles along the backs of his knees.  He stretched for another condom, not sure if he needed it, but wanting Keeler’s hand on his cock if it seemed like this time was going to be better than the last.

He took deep breaths when Keeler finally started to push into him, slow and just a bit of pain, but not as much and so slow, distracted from it anyway with Keeler’s mouth warm on his shoulder and warm hand on his cock, stroking lazily.

It was slow, so slow, Encke relaxing back into Keeler’s hands and half asleep with his warmth if not for how hard Keeler kept him, teasing and alternating between fast strokes to make him go rigid and slow to make him demand more, twisting back against Keeler to kiss him hard.

Keeler was tentative, shy and too gentle until Encke reached back to grab his ass and urge him a little faster, Encke arching backwards into him with how bad he needed it, breath coming ragged.  They found a rhythm between them, short and sharp and fast.

“Fuck,” Encke hissed again, back going rigid with how close he was.  

“Is it okay, I’m not hurting you—?” Keeler asked, pulling back a little but Encke twisted to kiss him, dragging Keeler back down to him.  Tried not to be embarrassed when Keeler laughed a little, biting his lip and tightening his hand on Encke’s cock.  It was a delighted sound, surprised and pleased in a way Encke had never gotten from him before and would have given anything to know how to get him to make it again.

“Fuck no, just—a little faster, baby, and shallow like that— _fuck_ —“

Keeler hummed against his shoulder, fingers digging sharp into the back of his thigh as Encke bit his knuckles, trying not to make too much noise and scare Keeler off again.  He craned his neck back, opening himself for Keeler’s warm mouth on his neck and ear, so fucking close with Keeler’s breathy, surprised moan as he came, and then Encke cursed and went rigid, coming hard, harder than he could ever remember feeling every pulse of Keeler’s cock in him.

Keeler breathed heavily against his back, biting back another little moan when he finally pulled out, leaving Encke there pleasantly sore and shaky, his legs gone weak as Keeler took care of the condoms and came padding back.  Encke pulled him down across his chest, too tired to fight when Keeler laughed and rolled away, tugging Encke to wrap around him, and in the morning Keeler was still there but twisted toward him, nose pressed to Encke’s chest.


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter refers to [A Matter of Timing](http://archiveofourown.org/works/500445/chapters/878228), which happens just between the previous chapter and this chapter. And uhhhhh just pretend they're using condoms in that fic, I wrote that before I had all the details of this big mess worked out.

And then, as if Keeler could have done any better if he tried, Abel.

Because tall and broad and dumb wasn’t Keeler’s type, quiet and serious was, and if Encke had any relief that Keeler would never fuck Thirty’s navigator or Puck because of it, having to keep Keeler from getting killed by Fifty or chase the navigator off without Keeler knowing more than made up for it.  Didn’t matter if Fifty was fucking the navigator or not, although Encke suspected not, not with Fifty still getting fucked by Thirty and whatever creepy possessiveness was between them, it only mattered that Encke didn’t want Fifty to have anything to do with Keeler, so Abel had to go.

Not that Encke wouldn’t have fucked the sweet little blond himself if he wasn’t already fucking Keeler, or Fifty, not that he didn’t think about it long and hard when he walked in on them together.  Couldn’t help thinking about it with Keeler sighing into his neck when Encke fucked him after, wondering what it would be like to fuck both of them at once, or just watch them together.  Skinny and a sweet mix of shy and bold, Abel would have been just Encke’s type before he was promoted to Keeler and all his complicated mix of strength and fragility.

If it weren’t for Abel being Fifty’s navigator, he’d have thought about it even harder, but that was just an even bigger mess waiting to happen, and Encke decided to put a stop to it when Abel ran into him headlong in the corridor outside his own fucking quarters late one evening, papers and a tablet going flying across the empty corridor.

Abel blushed furiously, obviously torn between kneeling to get his things, standing to attention and just flat running.  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I just walked back with Keeler, I wasn’t—I didn’t—it was only the one time, I swear, sir—“

“Calm the fuck down, son, I told you I don’t give a damn who Keeler fucks,” Encke said, even if that wasn’t quite true, but the pretty little navigator was shaking and so flustered he’d probably have a heart attack from fear if Encke raised his voice.  He crouched and helped Abel gather his things, papers and his unbroken tablet and a book.

Encke picked it up, turning it over in his hand as Abel reached for it.  _Anna Karenina_ , the tattered copy Fifty had held on to through basic, reading after lights out in the dim light through the windows, on nights when it had been clear enough for a moon.  The little shit had said he never read it, lying about everything even when he had no reason to, but he sat up with it for nights on end until Encke had taken it from him to make Fifty get some fucking sleep.  And then read it himself because it got the better of him wondering what could have been so good to distract Fifty from quietly crying himself to sleep all those nights.

“You reading that?” Encke asked, handing it back, and the little blond flushed.  “It’s good.  Sad, but good.”

Abel tucked it back with the rest of his things, glancing down and up through his lashes and messy hair, skinny and beautiful and not broken yet, though fuck knew how long that would last the longer he was left with Fifty.  “Yessir, my, um, my fighter lent it to me,” he said, and Encke frowned.

“You close?”

“I—um.  No, not as much—not anymore.  Not really.  Have you read it?” Abel asked, changing the subject, avoiding the issue of Fifty hanging between them.  If not for Fifty, Encke thought he might really not have a problem with Keeler and Abel fucking, starting to see the appeal of Keeler’s porn with the two pretty blondes, if they’d been skinny boys instead of women.  Abel had a pretty blush, sweet mouth and a little boldness, like Keeler might have been before Laius broke him.

“A long time ago,” Encke said.  “Mostly romances now.”

Abel looked up at him, breath shallow and licking his lips just a little, like Keeler did when he was thinking about kissing, and Encke stupidly brushed a lock of pale hair out of his face.  And fuck him for an idiot if he didn’t think about putting his hand behind Abel’s head and kissing him, twisting his fingers in Abel’s hair and dragging him back to the room to fuck with Keeler, stupid and selfish with wanting them both at once, if they were already fucking anyway.

He almost did it, standing closer than was professional, or good sense, Abel’s breath shallow as he tipped his head up.  Encke took a deep breath, overwhelmed with the innocent smell of him, like Keeler and Fifty and clean laundry.  Skinny and quiet and strong, without all Keeler or Fifty’s baggage.  “You better get back to quarters before lights out, Reliant,” he said finally, half regretting it and half wishing he’d had the sense to say it sooner.  “Hate to write you up for breaking curfew.”

Abel flushed to the tips of his ears and took a step back, embarrassed and maybe just a little hard even after fucking Keeler, and Encke had to keep himself from smiling at the poor pretty little thing’s embarrassment.  Would have been easier to solve the curfew problem by fucking him all night with Keeler, but it would have made so many more problems Encke didn’t even want to think about. 

He turned and left Abel there blushing in the hallway, and knew as soon as he heard footsteps who it was.  Encke glanced back once but kept walking, not his problem.

“The fuck are you doing?” Fifty hissed, hand tight around his navigator’s arm.  “This where you been all night, whoring around after officers?”

“No, I—“

“Shut the fuck up, Abel, I don’t _fucking_ want to hear it,” Fifty snarled, dragging him.

“Cain, you’re hurting—“

Encke stopped at the corner, turning to glare back at Fifty and his pretty navigator.  Not the navigator’s fault he was looking elsewhere, especially if that was what he went back to every night.  “Reliant, you can keep it up if you want more PT and some assault charges,” Encke barked, watching as Fifty and Abel both startled.  “You hear me, Cain?”

Abel glanced between them, grateful and worried as Fifty’s hand tightened on his navigator’s arm.

“I _said_ , do you fucking understand me, Reliant?” Encke demanded, Fifty staring at him with his jaw tight.

“Yes _sir_ ,” Fifty finally said, glaring at his navigator as Encke turned to go.  “Stay the _fuck_ away from him, Abel—“ he heard Fifty hiss again as he left, but Fifty’s navigator wasn’t his problem, so long as Fifty stayed away from Keeler, and Encke was going to make sure of it.

* * *

He said it as soon as he walked in the door, Keeler dressed but rebraiding his hair, tapping on his computer absently.  “You can’t keep seeing him,” Encke said, determined to put an end to it for once and for all.

Keeler frowned at him over his shoulder, going on with braiding his hair.  “Abel?  Why not?”

“His fighter is fucking crazy, fuck only knows—“

“The one you’re seeing,” Keeler cut in quietly, and Encke should have seen that one coming miles away, but he jumped right into it with both feet.

“No.  Yes.”  Encke scowled, trying to figure out why it was different, because of course it was different.  “Fuck, I’m not _seeing_ him, it’s complicated—“

“You fucking someone else and me locked away in a tower seeing no one doesn’t sound very complicated, Encke.  It sounds very simple,” Keeler said, and Encke would never get used to it when his voice went hard like that.  Keeler tied off his braid and turned back to his work, dismissing Encke just as surely as that first day in Keeler’s office.  “I haven’t slept with him again, since you took it upon yourself to scare him off, but I’ll keep _seeing_ whoever I like.  At least you knew I was seeing someone else, I had to find out about Cain from _Athos_.”

“Keeler, it’s not the same, you keep seeing Abel and you or him or you both are gonna end up dead,” Encke said, desperate, shaky with nerves over it, trying to figure out how to explain to Keeler why Fifty was so fucking dangerous without explaining his own part in it and making Keeler hate him.  “You owe me after all this, just fucking _trust_ me for once—“

“I don’t owe you anything,” Keeler said, and it would have been better if Keeler had just slapped him.

Encke balled a fist, angry with Keeler for not trusting him after all this and angrier still with himself for needing it so badly.  Things were supposed to be a certain way between navigators and fighters, there were rules even if no one talked about them, and Encke had done it Keeler’s way too long without getting anywhere.  

“This isn’t how it’s supposed to go,” he snapped before he thought better of it, “you can’t just fuck everybody you feel like.  You fucking wonder why everyone thinks you’re a—“ and he cut himself off as he realized what he was saying, his head finally catching up with his stupid mouth, his nerves getting the better of him every time.

“A _what_ , Encke?” Keeler asked, Encke’s heart beating too fast, panicking.  Keeler glanced back to look him up and down, seeing straight through him and hearing all the worst things Encke had ever thought but never said.  Not until just then.  “A _whore_?” Keeler said finally.  “Is that what you were going to say?”  He shrugged, turning away again.  Looked bored and blank, cold as that first week together.  _You heard everyone else had fucked me, so figured you might as well too?_   “Then say it,” Keeler said.  “Everyone else does, and you obviously think it.  So why not just say it like everyone else?”

Encke stood there shaking, knowing exactly how easy it would be to just say it and prove to Keeler he was just like all his other Enckes.  Then things wouldn’t be so complicated between them, none of this trying to make things work bullshit because they would both know exactly how things were, Keeler afraid of him and Encke not giving a fuck, just like with Fifty.  He clenched his hand, thinking that over, Keeler sitting there stiff and not looking at him, waiting to be proven right.

Encke slammed his hand on the door panel, leaving before he could do anything else he’d regret.


	19. Chapter 19

He knew he shouldn’t have done it, shouldn’t have walked down to crew quarters after lights out, should have pulled Cassius out of bed instead to go run laps, but he needed to take it out on someone who deserved it, who was already so broken it would’t matter what else Encke did.  Somebody to vent his frustrations over Keeler on, somebody as skinny and beautiful and breakable he didn’t care about breaking.

Fifty answered the door barely dressed, bed rumpled and smelling like sex, his navigator naked in the little nest of mattresses they’d made on the floor.  “Deimos, where the fuck have you been—“  Encke kept his face blank as Fifty covered his shock, bringing an arm up to block the door.  If Encke was surprised Fifty was fucking his navigator, he wasn’t surprised once he thought about it that Thirty and Fifty were sharing the pretty little thing between them.

“Tell your navigator to take a walk,” Encke said quietly.

Fifty stuck his jaw out, stupid, stubborn and defiant.  “No.”

Encke leaned down to say it, watching the navigator over Fifty’s shoulder.  Pretty, soft, normal, not Fifty’s type at all.  “That wasn’t a suggestion, Fifty,” Encke said.

“I don’t fucking care.”  Cain glared up at him, and Encke thought about telling the navigator to leave himself, show them both who was in charge, shove the navigator out of there and prove to Fifty that there wasn’t any safe little nest Encke couldn’t take away from him.  But he took a deep breath and blew it out, thinking about Keeler huddled up in the top bunk for what little safety it gave him from being yanked out of bed by any fighter stronger than him.

Fifty took slow breaths, jaw tight, looking like he wanted to bolt, barely keeping himself from looking back at the little navigator.  “I never went near your navigator,” Fifty said quietly, none of his false bravado in it for once.  “Leave mine alone.”  

And even though Fifty didn’t say it, they could both hear it, the closest Fifty would ever get to begging.  _Please_.  Even if Fifty never said it, he was begging for this as much as Keeler had been with the scotch, because the navigator was the last thing left nobody had taken from him yet.

Encke waited, watching Fifty finger the outline of a knife in his pocket, thinking about that.

Fifty broke first, his hand twitching for it when the silence stretched too long between them.  Encke wrapped a hand around his wrist, crushing the bones of his hand together.  “You don’t pull a knife on me, Reliant,” Encke said slowly.  “Get your ass out here.”

Cain gave him an almost grateful look and glanced back through the door, at his anxious navigator.  Big eyes, scared and earnest, and Encke could see Fifty thinking it over, making a decision.  He let Fifty go long enough to grab his jacket, watching as he knelt and pushed the navigator against the wall, leaning in to whisper.

“ _It’s fine, princess_ , _it’s fine,_ ” Fifty lied.  “Don’t worry, just wait for Deimos, I’ll be back in a minute.”

Abel blushed, brushing fingertips along Fifty’s jaw as he pulled away.  Worried and affectionate even if Abel was fucking Keeler, even if he was being used by Thirty and Fifty both, Encke thought maybe the navigator might not be so sweet and normal after all if he was caught up with someone like Fifty.  And frowned when he caught the quick squeeze Fifty gave his navigator’s hand before following Encke out, closing the door behind them with something that looked like relief.

He lit a cigarette as they walked, the first one in weeks except for quick drags hiding from Keeler down in training.  Took a deep drag of it and passed it over to Fifty, their hands brushing for just a second, the most they’d touched in years without it being sex or a fight.  Encke lit another one for himself, keeping an eye on Fifty to pull a knife on him, but Fifty only walked beside him, tense and just out of reach.  Willing to follow, obedient because he had to be, waiting to be grabbed and shoved around as much as Keeler had been.

“How long you been fucking your navigator?” Encke asked, wondering when Fifty had moved up in the world, handed a sweet, innocent looking navigator for sucking Bering’s cock.

“None of your _fucking_ business,” Fifty snarled, coiling tight, and Encke raised an eyebrow, surprised that was the nerve that hit hardest after all this time, and with Bering’s special little project sacrificing the navigator.  

Something had gotten complicated, Fifty not quite so well trained as Bering thought if he was getting attached.  Encke wondered if the navigator knew, if he was looking to get fucked by everyone besides Fifty.  

Wondered if Fifty knew that his last little corner of control was looking elsewhere, wondered how easy it would be to finally break Fifty by pushing him towards it, hinting until Fifty beat the shit out of his pretty, innocent navigator and did something even Bering would have to throw him away for.  Every last chance for Sacha’s stupid, naive ambitions finally ruined.

_Gonna go career, make a difference._

_If they let me._

_Two was right._

They waited for the lift in silence, Fifty crossing his arms over his chest as he smoked and glaring at the floor.

“Didn’t know you were fifteen,” Encke said when the lift doors closed, leaning against one wall and watching Fifty.

The little shit just shrugged.  Leaned against the far wall, trying to look bored but eyes on the floor just in front of Encke’s feet, watching for him to move.

Encke took a drag on his cigarette.  “Thought you were seventeen or eighteen and just a skinny little shit.  Why’d you lie your way in?”

Fifty glared up at him through his hair, looking at him for the first time.  “You know why,” he said quietly, and Encke did, the dead mother and the sociopath father, getting beaten for being a fag in the foster homes and sucking cock to stay out of the homeless shelters.  Fifty was a fucking fairytale princess, just needed a knight in shining armor to rescue him, even if all he’d gotten was Thirty.  

Encke tried not to think about what part that put him in.

He flicked ash into the corner of the elevator instead of thinking about it.  “Told you basic wasn’t kind to virgins,” he said, even though they both knew whose fault that had been.

“The fuck do you want, Eight?” Fifty snapped when Encke didn’t say anything else, the little shit always too impatient for his own good.  “You drag me out of bed in the middle of the fucking night to get fucking _nostalgic_?  Or you want me to fucking _apologize_ again?  You want me on my knees for it like last time?”

Encke looked him up and down, wishing Fifty didn’t look so much like Keeler, or Keeler so much like Fifty, both of them skinny and broken and scared.  The lift slowed to a stop at training, and Encke watched Fifty tense up, ready to be pulled out of the lift and either fucked rough or have the shit beaten out of him, because what the hell else had they ever done together.

He took a step towards Fifty, dropping his cigarette to grind it out under his boot without looking at it.  Fifty didn’t make a move, tense and backed up against the wall anyway, and just let Encke take his cigarette from him, grinding it out too.  Encke could feel the tension in him, his breath shallow, waiting, always just waiting for something to be done to him.

Fifty tipped his head up to kiss, and Encke should have known better, but kissed him anyway.  Put a hand behind his head, smoothing down his hair, like when things could have worked out between them and been anything besides a deal.  Kissed slow and almost sweet, like when they’d been on leave, before either of them really realized just how bad things between them were.

Encke pulled away first, brushing Fifty’s messy hair out of his face, wishing everything hadn’t gotten so fucking complicated.  “Go back to bed, Cain,” he said.  Back to his worried navigator and his safe little nest, where Encke should never have gone looking for him in the first place.

He left Sacha standing there alone in the lift and went to run laps by himself until he was nauseous, then pounded his hands raw into a punching bag, splitting his knuckles bloody.  Only left to collapse asleep in his office chair when he was too exhausted to think about any of it.


	20. Chapter 20

Encke spent the next day in an exhausted haze, stiff from sleeping in the chair, sore from beating himself raw and sick with his life.  He caught Keeler and Puck’s cold glances across central, too exhausted to be annoyed when Porthos gave him a quick, sympathetic pat on the shoulder as they passed in mess that afternoon, too frustrated with himself to care when Cassius caught it all.

He finally decided on it at the end of shift, worrying it over in his head and trying not to think about it at the same time, turning it over and over all day without admitting he was doing it.  Anxious and sick with it even though he couldn’t make himself stop prodding at it, like a burst blister, finally ruptured but sore and oozing, hurting worse than when it had been closed off, festering quietly.

The bunks were snapped back out from the walls when he went back, both neatly made up and Keeler perched up in the corner of the top bunk again with his glass of scotch.

Like nothing had changed between them, because really, it hadn’t.

Encke stood there in the middle of the room after he closed the door, Keeler watching him warily.

“I’m sorry,” Encke said finally.  “I’ll leave in a minute, I just came to get my shit.  You should go ahead and transfer me, this isn’t going to work.”

Keeler opened his mouth, closed it, frowning and swallowing something back.  It suddenly hit Encke that Keeler had been crying, shocked that this was the first time he’d seen Keeler let down his guard enough to be that upset in front of him, and all because Encke had led him on trying to pretend to be different from all his other Enckes.  If anyone else had done this to Keeler, he’d have gone out and beaten the shit out of them, but no one else had done it, not Laius cornering him in the hanger, not Bede showing the video around, no one but Encke making Keeler think someone actually gave a fuck about him and then ripping it away.

Encke watched as Keeler took a couple of shuddery breaths, trying to get himself under control again.

“I can’t transfer you.  I never could,” he said finally, sounding small.  “Command transferred Bede so he could start training in my replacement in case—in case I don’t make it through this, just like Laius.  We both made requests, but command didn’t do anything about them until I—until I started showing up in medical too often, because of the—the project.  I just needed you to think I could, in case—“ Keeler’s voice broke and he swallowed hard, sounding exhausted and sick, almost as tired as Encke felt, so tired he couldn’t work up anger that Keeler had lied to him because he knew exactly why.

Encke leaned back against the dresser, careful of the mostly-empty bottle of scotch on it, needing something else to hold him up or he’d just sink down through the floor with Keeler peering down at him.  “I’m sorry.  I’m just so fucking sorry about all of this, Keeler, I don’t fucking know what to do and I hate it.”

Keeler took deep breaths, thinking something over.  “I’ll stop seeing Abel," he said finally.  "And Porthos.”

“No, baby, see who you want.  I like Porthos, he makes you happy and all I want is for you to be happy.  You don’t—we don’t have to keep doing this, I won’t hurt you if—if you don’t want to sleep together,” Encke said, finally saying what he’d been afraid of all along.  If he could admit to himself that Fifty had only ever let himself be fucked because he was afraid of saying no, he could face down the same being true for Keeler.  And then maybe try to figure out why he’d never been able to see that before, after he finished hating himself for it, if he ever did finish with it.

“Can we cuddle?” Keeler asked suddenly.

“Baby, we don’t have to—“

Keeler cut him off by hopping down from his bunk, the empty scotch glass abandoned and Keeler steadier than Encke felt even though Keeler had been the one crying.

“I want to, and you said you’d stop calling me that,” he said, coming to take Encke’s hand in his.  Keeler tugged him to the bottom bunk, fragile and aggressive.  He took Encke’s hand and pulled his arm across his shoulders, scooting in closer and pulling his knees up.  Demanding to be held, insisting on Encke’s affection.

Encke sat there dumb with it, wishing he didn’t need so badly to hang on to Keeler.  He should never have let it happen, should never have gone chasing after Keeler or let himself be dragged into this awkward affection, he just needed it so badly, too weak to push Keeler away.

“Baby—Keeler—I really don’t care who you see, I won’t ever say a fucking thing about it again,” Encke said, and if he really thought about it, he didn’t, so long as it would make Keeler stop hurting so constantly, even if Keeler never let Encke touch him again.  “I just—I’m so fucking sorry about what I said, I’m just so fucking scared of something happening to you if you go near Cain or Deimos’ navigators and my stupid fucking mouth gets away from me.”

“Well.  I was never going to sleep with Athos anyway, Porthos says he’s terrible in bed,” Keeler said, lips pressed thin with trying not to smile.  “But what’s it matter?”

Encke took a shaky breath, afraid of saying it, afraid of facing what Keeler would think of him, but he’d faced down seven years in the service, death intimate and so fucking distant he couldn’t face sleeping on the top bunk for fear of the vertigo of it, so he’d make himself face this too.  “Things were—basic is really shitty, and I did some shitty things, especially to Fift—to Cain,” Encke said.  “I should never have fucked him again, things are just different with fighters.  It was never about sex, it was only ever about control.”

Keeler took a delicate breath, sharp and worried.  “What did you call him?”

“Fifty,” Encke said, dreading what came next.

“And what were you?” Keeler asked after a long minute.

“Eight,” Encke said, miserable with how he knew Keeler was looking at him, because Keeler knew exactly what that meant.  And as Keeler went stiff again sitting there under his arm, it didn’t hurt any less because Encke had been expecting it, maybe hurt worse because he’d expected it.

“Did you force him?” Keeler said finally, and Encke wished for Keeler’s sake he’d been strong enough to push him away, wished he’d stayed across the room with Keeler safe up in his bunk.

“No,” Encke said too fast.  “I don’t know.  I—basic is really shitty, the little guys get—got—passed around, unless they had someone to watch out for them, he was seventeen,” Encke lied, hating himself for it but more afraid of what Keeler would think of him if he knew it all.  “I was nineteen and too busy thinking with my dick, I just—it was just the way things worked.  I thought I was protecting him until things went to shit between us.”

They sat there in silence, Keeler stiff and Encke trying to interpret anything from his breathing or his silence or the way his bare toes curled against the sheets, anything besides actually looking at him and facing what he’d said.

Keeler carefully shrugged out from under his arm after a while, “I need to think about this,” Keeler said finally, standing.  

He stood there for a minute, frowning down at Encke, cold and skinny and so much stronger than Encke would have been if any of it had happened to him.  So much stronger than Encke was right then, almost shattered like glass when Keeler bent to brush a paper dry, cool kiss across his cheek, and it would have been better if Keeler had just slapped him.

Keeler climbed to his own bunk, putting distance between them and watching Encke, but not so warily as he had that first week, more thoughtful, a little pitying.

“I won’t forgive you if you leave again,” Keeler said when Encke pushed himself up from the bottom bunk, to leave Keeler in peace.  “You’re staying here and you’re not leaving.”

Encke stood there, because that was exactly what he’d been doing.  But more than anything he selfishly needed Keeler to forgive him, so he pretended that he’d only been getting up to turn off the lights, stripping for bed in the dark.

He lay down, eyes aching with exhaustion, and maybe with wanting to cry himself, but too weak to let Keeler hear him do it.  “I’m sorry,” he said instead.

“You should be telling him, not me,” Keeler said into the dark.

“I know,” Encke said, even though he probably never would.

They moved around each other carefully in the morning, and the morning after that, and the morning after that, until one night Encke came back at the end of his shift to find the mattresses neatly arranged on the floor and didn’t ask why, too grateful and selfish to really care.

* * *

There were funerals, too many funerals and not enough of them, Bede sacrificing himself to cover a retreat and getting a hero’s burial, and no one would ever know except Keeler, and Encke, and everyone aboard ship, that even if Bede had never been a rapist himself, he was responsible for making sure that video would never, ever, go away.  Encke initialed the letter home to the asshole’s parents, sick with himself and not able to really look at all the lies he was putting his name to.

And when Laius came back with blue squad but the navigator didn’t, Encke stood by Keeler at the funeral, wondering when he’d gotten himself so deep into someone else’s problems, or if they’d always been his problems.  Keeler and Laius watched each other across the navigator’s casket, Keeler’s face cold and blank, and if Encke wanted to pound Laius’ face in for the smug, knowing look he gave Keeler, he wanted even worse to throttle Laius just for still being alive, for not having the decency to give anyone closure.  

But instead Encke put an arm around Keeler after the service, and Encke didn’t ask if Keeler was crying for the dead navigator or himself, just held him until it was over and Keeler put himself back together, brushing cool lips against Encke’s cheek.

He left Fifty alone to his navigator and all his fucking problems, because Fifty wasn’t his problem anymore, and Keeler was.  Sacha had Abel and Thirty to look after him, and Keeler had nobody but Encke.  Not Encke’s problem if Sacha was too broken for Abel to fix, even though it was James’ problem for breaking him.

* * *

Months later they got their orders, Encke discharged without another tour and Keeler transferred to a colonial research liaison office, on the track for colonel or even Commander one day.  And if Encke had a little moment of bitterness for himself at not being fast tracked to promotion, or an anxious night lying awake worrying about Keeler left alone to deal with asshole fighters every day for the rest of his career, he got past it with the comfort of being able to move with Keeler for the transfer, and looking forward to doing something else with his life, since the military hadn’t turned out to be anything like he’d expected after all.

Keeler wanted to go career and make a difference, do peacekeeping and rebuilding, ambitious and optimistic.  Encke wanted to be there for him, for as long as Keeler would let him.

* * *

Keeler’s father wasn’t a tall man, but he looked tall, carried himself like he was tall, with tidy white hair swept back from his face and neat square glasses.  A perfect copy of Cook, really, and James was ready to dislike him for the sour look they shared until Keeler’s father broke into a smile and wrapped him in a hug, like it wasn’t only Keeler who’d come home.

He stepped back uncomfortably after Keeler made introductions, out of place when Keeler drew the mostly empty bottle of scotch out of his bag and his father pressed a hand to his mouth, taking off his glasses to wipe away tears.  “I brought it back,” Keeler said, trying to not cry himself, and James wished he didn’t know about all the rest, the parts he wasn’t sure he’d have been able to tell his father in Keeler’s place.

James froze when Keeler went to get three glasses, pretty little crystal tumblers, and raised an eyebrow when Keeler started pouring.  Emptied the last drops into them all, diluted them with a little soda water to stretch it out, and their fingers brushed as Keeler handed him his.

“To both my boys,” Keeler’s father said, and James’ heart twisted when Keeler put a hand in his, threading their fingers together as they drank.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's the last chapter for Someone Else's Problems. If you're into mpreg, [Small Favors](http://archiveofourown.org/works/505684/chapters/889567) is set just before the funerals, and if you're not, then this leads directly into [After](http://archiveofourown.org/works/534165/chapters/948009). I've got a chapter or two of Encke POV followup planned that will be set after After. Thank you everyone for reading. <3 <3 <3

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Cassius' Scavenger Hunt and Other Adventures](https://archiveofourown.org/works/689345) by [chollarcho](https://archiveofourown.org/users/chollarcho/pseuds/chollarcho)




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